Chapter 587

Once Ludger had learned the basics of magic, unlocking new classes in the same style had become… almost routine.

If a class was built around casting, mana flow, intent, shaping, output, then he could usually get his hands around the first principle quickly. Observe the pattern. Mimic it. Refine it. Let the System click the lock open once he’d proven he understood what mattered.

Even physical classes were easy when they relied on weapons.

A sword had rules. A spear had rules. A shield had rules. Range, angles, leverage, footwork. If you could break a fight into pieces, you could learn it fast. That was how Ludger’s mind worked.

But this? This was different. This wasn’t “hit harder” or “cast cleaner.” This was a tier above Berserker. Not in raw violence, Berserker was plenty violent, but in

control.

The main function of this art wasn’t rage. Rage was just the doorway.

The function was stamina. Not the vague kind people talked about in taverns. Not “endurance” as a personality trait. Real stamina. The hidden fuel that sat under every movement, every breath, every heartbeat. The thing you spent without noticing until suddenly you had nothing left and your body betrayed you.

This art treated stamina like mana. Like a resource you could sense, shape, throttle, store, burn, and weaponize. It was the difference between being strong and being efficient

.

It was the difference between pushing your body until it broke and making your body do unnatural things while staying intact.

Heat waves from a palm. Purging poison by command. Surviving cold barefoot. Holding Rage Flow without letting it steal your mind, then using that same pressure to

change how your body behaved.

It made controlling the body easier… by forcing you to control the fuel that made the body possible in the first place.

And that was why Ludger was struggling. Because you couldn’t brute-force this art with intelligence alone. You couldn’t shortcut it with a clever rune. You couldn’t “learn it fast” by copying the outer motion. The outer motion was meaningless.

The real work was inside, finding the thin line between will and flesh, between calm and combustion, between pushing and breaking. No wonder he was having trouble grasping even the most basic principle.

He was trying to grab something invisible with hands that had only ever needed to grab stone, mana, and weapons. And now he was being asked to grab himself. By the time the day started to end, Ludger felt like sighing so hard his lungs would file a complaint.

His legs were sore from sitting. His back ached from holding still too long in a cave that pretended stone counted as furniture. His muscles had that deep, dull burn that came from keeping Rage Flow on a leash and refusing to let it bite.

And the old man? Still cross-legged. Still meditating. Still breathing like time didn’t exist. He hadn’t given Ludger a single tip all day. Not one correction. Not one “you’re close.” Not one “stop tensing your shoulders, idiot.” Nothing. Just silence and that maddening stillness.

Ludger watched him for a while, then finally said, “Are you going to tell me what I’m doing wrong?” The old man didn’t open his eyes. His voice came out like a stone sliding.

“Explaining is useless.”

Ludger’s eyebrow twitched.

“You have to sense it,” the old man added.

Ludger stared at him. Of course. Of course it was that kind of training. The kind where the lesson was “figure it out” and the punishment for failure was time.

He held his breath for a second, then let it out slowly and decided not to argue. Arguing with someone like this was like arguing with a mountain. It didn’t change anything; it just made you tired.

Eventually, Ludger did what his body demanded. He took a break.

He stood, stretched, rolled his shoulders, and walked a small circle near the vents to get blood back into his legs. His muscles complained immediately, soreness spreading through his thighs and core like a slow fire.

When the ache dulled to something manageable, Ludger looked at the old man again and asked the question that had been sitting in the corner of his mind all day.

“Why do you live in a place like this?” Ludger asked. “Alone.”

The old man didn’t answer right away. He stayed still, eyes closed, as if the question had to wait its turn too. Ludger almost sighed again. Then, after a long pause, the old man spoke, quiet, slow, like dragging words out of a deep place.

“I want to die,” he said, “still trying to improve myself.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“And develop new techniques,” the old man continued. “Not repeat what others already do. Not live on old victories.”

His breath fogged faintly in front of his face, thin and steady.

“I can do that better alone,” he said. “With nothing grabbing my attention.”

He opened his eyes halfway, just enough that Ludger could see the weight behind them.

“No tribe to feed,” the old man said. “No children crying. No fools asking me to solve their small problems.”

His gaze flicked to Ludger. Not hostile. Just blunt.

“Silence makes progress,” he finished. “People make noise.”

Ludger stood there for a moment, letting the answer settle.

It wasn’t noble. It wasn’t tragic. It was… honest. A man who had decided the only thing worth doing was sharpening himself until the end, and had removed everything else from his life like it was clutter. Ludger understood it more than he wanted to.

Then he looked down at his sore hands and thought, not for the first time, that his own life would never allow that kind of solitude.

He had too many people grabbing his attention. Too many people who needed him. Which meant if he wanted to improve the way this old goat had… He’d have to do it with noise. And still make progress anyway.

It sounded like the mindset of one of those hardcore martial artists, people who treated comfort like a weakness and solitude like a forge.

Ludger watched the old man’s still posture and the way his breathing stayed slow even after hours of nothingness, and the thought slipped in uninvited:

Is that the class?

Some kind of Hermit. Ascetic. Body-and-mind refinement path where the System rewarded obsession and isolation. Then his gaze drifted over the giant’s shoulders, the thick forearms, the dense muscle sitting on him like it had been carved and layered over decades. Ludger’s mouth twitched.

Or maybe it’s just the Bodybuilder class.

He didn’t say it out loud. He’d learned, repeatedly, that jokes didn’t land well in caves with beast skull helmets. The old man suddenly spoke without opening his eyes, like he’d been listening to Ludger’s thoughts through the air.

“You have the potential to become a hermit too.”

Ludger blinked once.

The old man’s voice stayed rough, almost bored. “You actually look like you need it.”

Ludger frowned. “Need it?”

“If you focused on improving yourself only,” the old man said, “you wouldn’t have so many worries in your head.”

Ludger stared at him, expression blank. It wasn’t the first time someone had implied he carried too much, but hearing it from a man who lived alone in a cave like it was a philosophy made it land differently.

“How can you tell?” Ludger asked. “That I…” he paused, choosing the phrasing carefully, “... have that many worries.”

The old man finally opened his eyes, just enough to pin Ludger with a calm, heavy stare.

“Because only a fool,” he said, “or someone with a lot of problems…”

He let the silence sharpen.

“…would come looking for me.”

Ludger held the stare for a moment, then exhaled slowly through his nose. It wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t helpful. Still… the old goat had noticed. And that meant the training wasn’t only about Rage Flow.

It was about what drove someone to chase strength hard enough to walk into an endless winter and sit patiently outside a cave until a silent giant decided to speak.

The old man’s gaze didn’t waver. He spoke slowly, like he was carving the words into stone instead of wasting them on air.

“The more you have,” he said, “the more you want.”

Ludger stayed silent. The old man continued, voice rough but steady.

“You get a home,” he said, “and you want it safe.”

“You get a family,” he went on, “and you want them protected.”

“You get people who follow you,” his eyes narrowed slightly, “and you want them fed, trained, and alive.”

He lifted a hand, palm up, as if weighing something invisible.

“The more you want,” the old man said, “the less you can focus on what really matters.”

His palm closed into a fist.

“Every attachment pulls you in a different direction,” he said. “Every promise, every obligation, every mouth that needs you, each one steals a piece of your attention. You become busy. You become tired. You become scared of losing what you already have.”

His mouth curled faintly, not in humor, but in certainty.

“And when you are scared,” he said, “you stop improving. You stop taking risks that make you stronger. You stop pursuing the hard path, because the hard path threatens what you’re clinging to.”

He leaned forward a fraction.

“The less things tying you down,” he said, “the more you can focus on improving yourself.”

He spread his hand toward the empty cave, the vents, the bones, the silence.

“No distractions,” he finished. “No noise. Only progress.”

Ludger listened, still as stone, and felt the shape of it. It wasn’t just a lesson. It was a pitch. The old man was a philosopher too, one of those men who didn’t just live a lifestyle, but tried to sell it to anyone willing to sit still long enough to hear it.

Ludger understood the appeal. It was clean. Simple. Brutal. Cut everything away. Sharpen yourself until nothing else matters. But that wasn’t him. He wasn’t obsessed with power for power’s sake. He didn’t want strength as an end goal, a trophy, a way to look down on others.

He saw power as a tool. A hammer. A wall. A key.

Something you used to achieve your goals, protect the guild, keep his family safe, make Lionfang strong enough that nobody could casually decide to “manage” it.

That was why the old man’s philosophy didn’t fit neatly in his chest. And yet… Ludger couldn’t help the thought that slipped in anyway, bitter and honest.

My approach is failing a bit.

Not completely. He’d built an incredible foundation.

But the Regent’s offer had proved something uncomfortable: even the best tool was limited if the structure above you was bigger. If the world decided to squeeze, you could be forced into choices you hated no matter how much leverage you thought you had.

Maybe the old man’s way wasn’t the answer. But maybe the core of it, the part about focus, about cutting noise, had a point. Ludger looked at the cave walls, at the emptiness, at the quiet that made training possible without interruption.

Then he looked outward, in his mind, toward Lionfang. Toward his family. Toward the obligations that were the entire reason he’d come here. He couldn’t become a hermit. But he could learn something from one. He could learn how to sharpen himself harder, faster, without letting the noise own him.

And if his “power as a tool” mindset was starting to fail him, maybe it wasn’t because it was wrong. Maybe it was because the tool wasn’t big enough yet.

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