Chapter 579

The thought followed him out of bed and into his boots.

A flying vehicle. Ludger stood by the door for a second, hand resting on the latch, mind drifting over the idea like a finger tracing a blade’s edge.

Stone rails were still

roads.

Just better ones.

The next step wasn’t a smoother line across the ground.

It was ignoring the ground entirely.

A dirigible, maybe. A fat-bellied balloon with a rigid frame, runic reinforcement woven through the ribs, and a mana core chamber designed to keep lift stable even when the wind turned ugly. He could picture it too easily, earth-shaped fittings, spider silk lashings that didn’t rot, rune plates for pressure control, and wind magic turning the air into a river you could ride.

It was… feasible.

And the more he thought about it, the more the idea felt like the natural progression after stone rails: if the Empire wanted logistics, then give them logistics that didn’t need their roads, their checkpoints, their “inspection stations.”

It would change trade. It would change travel. It would make border towns matter less, unless you owned the sky. But Ludger’s mouth tightened as he stepped outside and felt the morning cold bite his cheeks.

A flying vehicle wasn’t power the way he wanted…. Not the kind that mattered when an Empire decided to squeeze. A dirigible would give him influence. It would make people negotiate. It would make nobles smile and merchants salivate.

It would make the Regent

more interested.

But it wouldn’t give Lionsguard military power. It wouldn’t stop armies. It wouldn’t win a war. It wouldn’t keep imperial soldiers from marching into Lionfang with “legal authority” and a polite expression. Unless he used to bombard enemies from above.

Influence could buy time. Influence could buy allies. Influence could even buy safety, sometimes. But if someone wanted to take what you built, influence didn’t stop them unless you had teeth behind it.

Ludger walked, hands in his pockets, eyes half-lidded against the light. Lionfang was already waking up. Someone hammered at a workshop. A cart rattled. A guild trainee ran by with a bundle of something that looked too heavy for his arms, stubbornness making up the difference.

Ludger barely noticed. His mind kept turning. Stone rails. Dirigibles. Nodes. Underground routes. All of it was infrastructure. All of it was

movement.

But the Empire didn’t just want movement. It wanted

control

of movement.

And if Ludger built something that bypassed their roads, the Empire wouldn’t thank him for “innovation.” They’d demand ownership. Which meant the real answer wasn’t just a better invention.

It was something that made taking his inventions costly enough that even the Regent hesitated. Maybe the answer wasn’t in constructions at all. Maybe it was in him.

His classes. His jobs. The strange mix of tools the System had already carved into him, Reinforcer, Magic Enhancement, earth shaping, runes, Overdrive bursts.

Or maybe the answer was something new. A class he didn’t have yet. A job he hadn’t unlocked.

A role that didn’t just build things, but

bound

them, legally, magically, socially, into a structure the Empire couldn’t swallow without choking. Ludger left his home with the morning air in his lungs and a dull, persistent annoyance in his gut.

He didn’t have the solution. But he knew where to look. Either he’d wring the answer out of the classes and jobs he already had…

Or he’d go find a new one. And this time, it would be something the Empire couldn’t put a collar on.

Ludger’s thoughts spiraled the way they always did when he was annoyed. fast, sharp, and halfway feral.

Fuck it.

He pictured it for a second, absurd and glorious.

I’ll fabricate weapons in this world, become a billionaire, then build a power armor so the annoying guys can fuck off.

The image came with a ridiculous mental montage: nobles knocking on Lionfang’s gate, only to bounce off a shimmering plate of self-adjusting runes while a polite sign informed them their request had been denied due to “insufficient respect.”

Ludger snorted.

Then, to his own surprise, he actually laughed, quiet, short, like the sound had to sneak out before his discipline noticed.

It did seem fun. It also sounded like something Linne and Dalan would say with straight faces while already halfway done building it. Ludger wasn’t them. Not yet.

He didn’t have their depth of knowledge. Not the experience. Not the decades of weird mistakes and near-deaths that turned “good idea” into “working device.” He could forge clever things, sure, bracers that burst power cleanly, rails that saved mana and lives, but

a power armor

? The kind that thought, adapted, and made politics irrelevant?

That was a different tier of insanity. A tier he couldn’t shortcut with sheer effort. He let the fantasy fade, the laugh dying as quickly as it came, replaced by the usual calm. Still… the fact that his mind jumped there at all told him something. He didn’t just want a better deal.

He wanted the ability to tell the world “no” and have it

stick.

With that thought sitting in his chest like a coal, Ludger’s steps carried him down toward his next destination. The closer he got, the louder the sounds became, water slapping glass, boots on stone, voices colliding like fists and the sound of the training pool was already alive.

Sigrid stood near the edge with her arms crossed, posture rigid, eyes scanning the tank like she was counting flaws more than people. A few northerners were in the water already, practicing controlled strikes and grapples, moving in ugly, disciplined bursts instead of wild thrashing.

Others waited on the stone floor, dripping and shivering, listening to shouted corrections like they were prayers.

Sigrid glanced toward Ludger as he approached. No greeting. No smile. Just that look she wore when she approved of something but refused to encourage it too much. Ludger stopped at the pool’s edge and watched for a moment, silent, evaluating.

The northerners fought like they lived: in the moment, with bruises as their lessons. And today, at least, the moment was on his side. He exhaled once, slow.

Then he stepped closer to the glass and started thinking about golems again, about joints, pressure, mana flow… and about what kind of “armor” a guild needed to survive an Empire.

By the time Ludger finished the first set of parts, his mana circuits had that familiar warmth, like the world had leaned on him and he’d leaned back harder.

It wasn’t the whole mimic runic golem. Not even close. But the foundation pieces mattered most, and those were the ones he didn’t trust to anyone else yet.

He lifted a hand over the ground and pulled.

Earth answered.

Not as a wave, not as a dramatic eruption, just a precise, grinding shift. The ground beneath the platform rippled in controlled segments, and components rose out of it like the bones of a machine being assembled from the world itself.

A ribbed torso shell first, curved plates, layered with reinforcement ridges that would distribute pressure and impact. Then a pair of joint rings, thick and perfectly round, with shallow grooves already carved into their inner edges where runes would later be engraved. Anchor plates followed, wide, heavy slabs with tooth-like protrusions meant to bite into silt and rock underwater.

Each piece hovered for half a breath in the “wrong” place, suspended by Ludger’s control, before settling into a neat, brutal line on the platform. He released the mana. The air stopped humming.

Ludger stood, flexed his fingers once, then brushed the dust from his palms. A thin crust of grit clung to his skin from shaping earth at that density. He wiped it off on a rag, slow and methodical. That’s when he noticed Sigrid.

She wasn’t watching the tank. Not the northerners drowning each other politely under her supervision. She was watching

him.

Curiosity sat on her face like a scar, half interest, half suspicion. Like she was trying to decide whether what he’d just done counted as craft… or witchery. Ludger met her gaze for a second, then looked back at his hands.

Ludger finished cleaning his fingers, then asked, casual as if he were asking about breakfast.

“What do you do,” he said, “aside from giving orders?”

Sigrid’s eyebrows slammed down.

The air around her shifted, subtle, but real. The northerners closest to her glanced over, bodies tensing as if they expected a fight to start right there on the stone floor.

Her mouth opened. The look she gave him said

boy, you want to die?

It really did sound like he was picking a fight.

Ludger didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He just added, “Whatever you say is your specialty.”

Sigrid’s expression paused mid-snap. Then it changed, just a little. Not soft. But clarified.

“Oh,” she said, voice rougher than before. “That.”

She shifted her stance, arms still crossed, but the tension in her shoulders loosened a fraction.

“While my husband fought in the north years ago,” Sigrid said, “I stayed.” Her eyes flicked over the northerners in the tank, then out again like she could see past walls. “Someone had to look after what was left behind.”

She tilted her chin up, proud in a way that wasn’t pretty.

“I led the tribes that didn’t go with him,” she continued. “The old. The young. The ones who couldn’t raid, couldn’t march, couldn’t swing a club for days at a time.” Her lips curled. “If you think that is easy, you are stupid.”

Ludger nodded once. He didn’t argue. He was listening. She took a step toward the tank, eyes narrowing.

“And when monsters came close,” she said, “I learned how to make sure they didn’t reach the tents.”

Ludger’s gaze sharpened. “How would you fight if beasts attacked them?”

Sigrid’s smile was thin.

“Like this.”

She uncrossed her arms.

The motion was simple, but the

intent

behind it snapped the room tighter. Sigrid lifted her hand and drew a short line through the air with two fingers, like she was cutting something invisible. Her voice dropped into a harsh, old cadence, half chant, half command.

Mana answered her differently than it answered Ludger. Not heavy. Not structural. Predatory.

A circle of faint, pale light flashed beneath her boots, signs that looked less like writing and more like claw marks. The temperature dipped. The hair on Ludger’s arms lifted.

Then the air in front of Sigrid thickened, twisting into a jagged, translucent shape, like a spear made from wind and spite. It didn’t shine like a mage’s pretty spell. It looked

raw

, like it had been dragged out of an animal’s throat.

She snapped her hand forward. The spear launched with a crack like ice breaking.

It hit a boulder in the distance, vibrating for a heartbeat before exploding into a burst of shivering pressure that rattled the glass of the tank. The northerners in the water flinched as the shockwave rolled through the tank.

Sigrid lowered her hand like she’d just pointed at something. No panting. No drama. Just certainty.

“That,” she said, “is one spell. I have others.”

Ludger stared at the impact mark, then at the fading runes. He could feel the technique behind it, shamanic shaping, not refined like imperial magic, but layered with intent and practice. The kind of spell built for killing something big before it got close enough to bite.

He nodded once, genuine this time.

Sigrid watched him carefully. “Still think I only give orders?”

Ludger wiped the last bit of grit from his thumb and looked back to the golem parts he’d raised.

“No,” he said. “I think you give orders because you

can.

”

Sigrid huffed, which might’ve been approval.

“Good,” she said. “Now stop talking and make your stone monster. My people are not dying because you were curious.”

Ludger’s eyes stayed on the fading rune marks for a moment longer. Then he turned back to Sigrid.

“Teach me.”

Sigrid blinked once, slow. “Teach you what.”

“Your shaman magic,” Ludger said, like it was obvious.

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