Chapter 585

The giant watched the steaming bowl like it was a strange animal.

Then he snorted again, this time with something closer to contempt.

“What you did is useless,” he said.

Ludger blinked once. He glanced at the pot. The bubbling water. The cleaned meat. The steam rising in steady waves.

Then he looked around the cave, no fire pit, no smoke stain on the ceiling, no stacked wood, no signs of anything resembling a normal meal.

Useless?

Ludger’s eyes narrowed, confusion threading with annoyance. He probably believed cooking was pointless.

He probably also believed fire was useless, seeing as he didn’t have one going, unless he counted the heat vents and whatever iron stomach he’d been relying on for years.

Ludger opened his mouth to respond… and didn’t get the chance.

The giant shifted. Not like he was standing up. Not like he was reaching for a weapon. He simply twisted his stomach and torso a little, as casually as adjusting a belt. Then he leaned forward and vomited. It hit the stone with a wet slap.

Gastric juice splattered, sharp-smelling and steaming faintly in the cave’s warmth. Mixed in with it were… things. Not just chewed meat.

Things that had no business being in a stomach this long without being broken down properly. stringy fur clumps, pale fragments that looked like half-softened connective tissue, bits of something hard that might’ve been small bones or cartilage, and darker lumps that made Ludger’s mind briefly run through a list of

possible parasites

before he forcibly shut it down.

Ludger stared. The giant wiped his mouth with the back of his hand like he’d just spit out a bad taste, then straightened as if nothing had happened.

Ludger’s expression stayed calm, mostly because he had practice, but his eyes narrowed into a squint.

He sure hoped Sigrid hadn’t sent him here to learn this. The great northern secret art.

How to vomit at will technique.

He swallowed once, carefully, and spoke with the same dry tone he used when the world insisted on being disgusting.

“…Right,” Ludger said. “Impressive.” He paused, eyes flicking to the puddle on the stone. “I’ll… stick to ‘useless’ cooking.”

Ludger let the silence sit for a moment.

Mostly because he needed his brain to stop trying to imagine what else the giant’s stomach could be hiding.

Then he stepped a little to the side, out of splash range, out of smell range, and decided to reset the conversation like a sensible person.

He straightened his posture, kept his voice even, and introduced himself properly.

“My name is Ludger,” he said. “Vice Guildmaster of the Lionsguard in Lionfang.”

He didn’t emphasize it. He didn’t puff his chest. Titles were only useful when they made doors open.

“I came to learn,” Ludger continued, eyes steady. “Sigrid believes there’s magic, an art, that only you can teach.”

The giant’s head tilted slightly. Then, subtly, but unmistakably, he

moved.

Not a step back. Not a step forward. A shift in attention. Like a weight in the air had changed.

Under the beast-skull helmet, his eyes sharpened, the shadows around his face seeming to rearrange. His chewing slowed. His posture tightened by a fraction, the way it did when a man stopped treating you like a nuisance and started treating you like information.

Ludger noticed immediately. They didn’t have “internet” in this world. No fast rumors, no neat printed propaganda. Fame traveled the old way.

Caravans. Traders. Mercenaries. Drunks in taverns telling stories that grew teeth as they crossed mountains. And somehow, his name had reached this far north already. Which meant the giant wasn’t as isolated as he pretended to be. He had visited settlements. Or at least lingered close enough to listen.

The giant stared at Ludger for a long moment, expression unreadable beneath bone and shadow.

Then he grunted, a sound that might have been amusement or irritation.

“Ludger,” he repeated, like tasting the word.

Ludger kept his face calm, but inside he filed it away. So the old goat had heard of him. Good. That meant he wasn’t starting from nothing.

It also meant the north was smaller than it looked, at least when it came to stories worth repeating.

Ludger nodded once, respectful but unyielding.

“Sigrid thinks you’re worth bothering,” he said. “That should tell you she’s serious.”

The giant’s gaze stayed on him, heavy and evaluating, as if trying to decide whether the boy standing in his cave was truly the one the rumors described… or just another traveler with a big name and fragile bones.

Ludger didn’t flinch. He’d come too far for silence and vomit tricks.

The giant’s stare stayed on Ludger for a long time, heavy enough to feel like weight on the chest.

Then he spoke again, voice still rough, but slower now, measuring each word.

“If what I heard is true,” the man said, “and you can use the northerners’ rage…”

He paused, as if the idea itself was something he didn’t offer lightly.

“…then you can learn from me.”

Ludger didn’t move. Didn’t nod. Didn’t show relief. Inside, he felt a small shift. Not victory, just a door cracking open. The giant leaned back slightly, still chewing, still half-shadow beneath his skull helmet.

“It will take years,” he said bluntly. “But it is feasible. With what you have done… with what you have built… you are not like the others.”

Years.

The word landed like a stone dropped into a quiet pond. Ludger’s mind instantly tried to reject it.

Years?

He’d come here expecting… not easy, but efficient. A trick. A skill prompt. A lesson. Something he could catch, lock into the System, and move on with momentum.

He wanted to learn in a day or two, then head to the next “old goat.” Stack knowledge. Build leverage fast enough to outpace the Empire’s attention.

Years meant slow. Years meant being tied down. Years meant the Regent might already have his hooks in Lionfang by the time Ludger finished the first set of lessons.

He didn’t like years. But he didn’t say any of that.

Because Ludger could think arrogantly about other people. He knew it. He was aware of it the same way he was aware of his fists, something useful, something dangerous, something that could hurt the wrong thing if handled poorly.

Thinking arrogantly was one thing. Talking arrogantly was how you got a door slammed in your face before you even stepped through. So he kept his expression calm and his voice even.

“How do we start?” Ludger asked.

The giant watched him for a moment, as if checking for impatience behind the composure.

Ludger met his gaze without flinching, but he didn’t push. Inside, the thought still hovered, sharp and stubborn.

Years.

He could tolerate cold. He could tolerate silence. He could even tolerate vomit-as-a-hobby.

But years?

Ludger kept that reaction buried where it belonged. First impressions mattered.

And he hadn’t come all this way to fail the first test by letting his ambition speak louder than his brain. The giant stared at him for a moment longer, then jerked his chin toward the back of the cave.

“We start in the morning,” he said.

Ludger’s first instinct was irritation. Of course it was morning. Everything in the north was “tomorrow.” Everyone here treated time like it was infinite and visitors like they were optional.

He didn’t like it. But he was fully aware he needed patience more than ever.

More than that, something in his gut told him a good night’s rest would be necessary for whatever “rage training” actually meant, it was pretty tiresome to use Rage Flow, after all.. Not the kind of training you did half-sleeping and half-thinking about regents and logistics. If it touched the mind, if it touched the part of him that the Berserker class already made dangerous, then going in tired would be stupid.

So he didn’t complain.

He nodded once. “Fine.”

The giant didn’t answer. He just resumed chewing, slow and methodical, as if conversation had a limited quota for the day.

Ludger moved to the mouth of the cave and settled down where the warm air still reached him without trapping him in the stink of raw meat. He didn’t have a bedroll. He’d packed for movement, not comfort. So he made do.

He set his backpack down, leaned his back against the rough wall, and adjusted his cloak to keep the stone from biting too hard through cloth. It wasn’t soft, but it was stable. He’d slept on worse, stone floors in barracks, wagons, the ground beside a labyrinth entrance while everyone else took turns pretending they weren’t afraid.

Outside, the night had opened up. It wasn’t cloudy here. The sky above the northern peaks was clear and brutally honest, like the cold had scrubbed the air until nothing remained but distance.

Stars spilled across the darkness in thick clusters, so many that it looked less like scattered points and more like white dust thrown across velvet. A pale band of light cut diagonally through the sky, faint and dense, as if someone had smeared a glowing brushstroke from horizon to horizon. In that band, the stars weren’t just bright, they were layered, stacked, almost crowded, like the world had too many lights and nowhere else to put them.

Here and there, individual stars burned sharper than the rest, cold, steady pinpoints that didn’t flicker, as if they were watching the ground with patient indifference. Near the peaks, the sky looked darker, deeper, the kind of black that made the stars feel even farther away.

Ludger stared. He’d never been the type to admire nature. Mountains were obstacles. Snow was inconvenience. The sky was… weather. But tonight, sitting in the mouth of a cave beside a silent giant wearing a beast skull, the stars didn’t feel like decoration.

They felt like scales.

Like the world was reminding him how small one town was, how small one guild was, how small one boy was, no matter how many walls he built or how many skills he dragged out of the System.

It should’ve been discouraging. Instead, it made something inside him settle. The stars didn’t care about regents. They didn’t care about titles. They didn’t care about “offers” or “loyalty” or paper chains.

They just existed, cold and endless and constant. And Ludger realized, with an unpleasant clarity, that his work had to be the same. Not constant in pace, he’d never be slow if he could help it, but constant in intent. He had to work harder than before.

Not because he wanted to prove something. Because the goal was heavier now. His mother. The twins. His father’s pride and exhaustion. The guild that depended on him even when they pretended they didn’t. Lionfang.

A future where people could sleep without listening for boots on the road. Ludger let out a slow breath, watching it fog faintly, then dissolve into the cold night. He didn’t make a vow out loud. He didn’t need to.

He just kept his eyes on the northern sky a little longer, letting the quiet and the stars press into him like a weight he could carry, then closed them, leaned back into the stone, and forced himself to rest.

Morning would come. And if the old goat was right, it would take years.Then Ludger would simply have to find a way, because he always does.

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