Chapter 590

Ludger paused mid-strap.

“…Valk?” he repeated.

The old man’s gaze sharpened at the sound of his own name leaving someone else’s mouth.

Ludger realized he’d never actually asked. He’d just assumed the man would refuse, or say something dramatic about abandoning names and living beyond such things. So he’d been ready for that.

Ready to hear:

Names are for tribes. I am beyond tribes.

Instead, the giant looked away for a beat, then grunted.

“Valk,” he said again. “That is my name.”

Ludger nodded once, accepting it without making it a bigger moment than it needed to be.

“Ludger,” he said, as if introductions belonged at the end as much as the beginning. Then he tightened the last strap and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

The weight settled against his back like a familiar promise. He looked at Valk, eyes calm.

“If you ever come south,” Ludger said, “you’ll be welcome in Lionfang.”

Valk didn’t respond immediately. The idea of this massive hermit stepping into a growing town full of rules, noise, and people probably sounded like torture. Ludger didn’t wait for agreement.

“You’ll find some interesting things there in a month or two,” he added. “If you’re curious.”

That, at least, earned a slight pause, Valk’s eyes narrowing a fraction, not interested in comfort, but always interested in

progress.

Ludger adjusted the strap once, then turned toward the cave mouth. He stopped at the edge, half-lit by morning, and glanced back.

“See ya later,” Ludger said.

Then he stepped out into the cold, leaving the cave behind, and leaving Valk staring after him in silence, as if wondering what kind of boy walked into an endless winter, stole a first step that took years, and then casually promised the future like it was something he could schedule.

Valk stood at the mouth of his cave and watched the boy go.

Ludger didn’t trudge through the snow like a normal traveler. He moved in bursts, clean, controlled steps that skimmed over drifts and hardpack without sinking. His breath stayed steady. His posture stayed loose. The snow clung less, and when it did, it didn’t slow him.

And the cold… The cold no longer bothered him the same way. Not because the north had gotten kinder. Because Ludger had found a way to make his body

answer

instead of complain. That technique could do that much.

Valk watched him shrink into the white distance until he was just a moving speck between ridges, then nothing at all. For a long moment, Valk didn’t move.

The wind rolled past him. Steam drifted out from the vents like the earth was breathing. It was the first time he had ever managed to teach someone his technique and succeeded.

Not the rough parts. Not the surface tricks. The real beginning, the first hinge of the art, the doorway that most couldn’t even see, let alone open. He had been waiting for that for many years.

And yet… he didn’t feel accomplished. No swelling pride. No warmth in the chest. No triumphant sense of completion. If anything, he felt strangely empty. Valk exhaled slowly through his nose and realized why.

Because he had taught Ludger, but not in the way he had imagined. He hadn’t guided him for years. He hadn’t shaped him slowly, beaten bad habits out of him, watched him fail until patience grew into wisdom.

The boy had taken one demonstration and a handful of words… and pulled far more out of it than any “student” had a right to. Like he was built to steal lessons. Like his mind and body were already hungry for the shape of the technique, and Valk had simply pointed at the door.

Ludger had said he would learn at his own pace from there. Confident. Calm. Almost casual. And somehow, Valk didn’t doubt it. That was the unsettling part. Not the speed. Not the talent. The certainty.

Valk had lived long enough to know most people lied to themselves about progress. They spoke big, then stalled. They burned bright, then faded. They claimed a path, then stopped walking the moment the path demanded pain.

But Ludger… Ludger didn’t sound like someone making a promise. He sounded like someone stating a schedule. Valk’s eyes narrowed, and his mouth twitched, half snort, half acceptance.

“Strange boy,” he muttered into the wind.

Then he stepped back into his cave, the quiet swallowing him again, but with a new thought sitting somewhere deep and stubborn: Maybe the art wouldn’t die with him after all.

Not because he’d taught it properly. But because he’d met someone who didn’t need “proper.”

Someone who could turn a single spark into a fire, and then walk away, already planning what to burn next.

Ludger crossed the snowfield with a new rhythm in his body.

He didn’t rely on brute force Wind Step this time, not entirely. Instead, he reached inward and touched the thing he’d unlocked, feeling it like a reservoir that had always been there but had never had a handle.

Vitality Well.

The moment he drew on it, his body felt lighter. Not weightless, not magical flight, just… efficient. The stiffness in his joints eased. His steps became smoother. His muscles responded a fraction faster, like they’d been tuned.

The cold wind hit him and slid off without biting the same way. It still existed, still tried to peel heat from his skin, but his body didn’t panic about it. His breathing stayed steady. The north felt less like an enemy and more like terrain. But he could also feel the price.

Stamina drained in a steady pull, clean and undeniable, like water running from a bucket with a hole you couldn’t plug. Not catastrophic. Not even uncomfortable yet. Just constant. Nothing came without a cost, obviously.

Ludger didn’t mind. This much was fine. He’d spent more stamina doing dumber things.

And if he was being honest, he barely noticed the cold wind now compared to before, not because he’d become immune, but because his body’s baseline had shifted. It wasn’t fighting the environment as loudly.

He slowed for a moment, pulled out the map, and checked his route again. Sigrid’s landmarks stared back at him: river fork, ridge, burned hill, ice crack that sang.

Her words echoed too,

old goats

with

unusual arts

that were hard to pass down.

Ludger tucked the map away and scanned the horizon, eyes narrowing over snow and distant rock. The next destination was farther, and the land between wasn’t friendly. It didn’t need to be. He was moving faster now, with more tools than he’d had when he started.

Still… He couldn’t help the thought that lingered like a thorn. Would he find another Valk? Another lone, brutal specialist with a technique that didn’t fit imperial manuals and didn’t care about polite conversation? It was possible. It was also too convenient.

So Ludger kept his skepticism tight, like a glove. But he kept moving anyway. Because convenient or not, the north had already proven one thing: Sometimes the weirdest answers were hiding in the cold, waiting for someone stubborn enough to sit outside a cave until silence got bored.

Ludger left early in the morning, long before the sun climbed high enough to pretend it could warm anything.

He’d expected to move fast. He

was

moving fast. And it still took time.

Sigrid’s landmarks weren’t “nearby.” They weren’t even “within a day” the way people in towns talked about distance. Out here, distance was measured in empty horizons and how many times the wind could slap your face before you found something that looked familiar.

The ridge she’d mentioned took hours to reach.

The “narrow river fork that looks like it’s dying” was a thin cut in the land, half-frozen and stubborn, and by the time he crossed it, his legs already carried that steady fatigue that came from traveling in cold, constant micro-corrections, constant resistance.

He checked the map twice and realized the same unpleasant truth both times: They were much further away than he’d imagined. The north was… absurd. Too big. Too empty. Too willing to swallow time.

By the time he finally found the so-called burned hill, the sun had already set again. It wasn’t subtle.

Black stone jutted from the snow like ribs. Ash-colored earth broke through in patches where nothing wanted to grow. Char marks scarred exposed rock, old enough that the edges had been weathered smooth, but still visible, like the hill had been branded by fire and never forgiven for it.

Even the snow looked different here, slightly gray in the shadows, as if the ground beneath it still remembered smoke.

Ludger stood at the edge of it and looked around, breathing steady, eyes scanning the horizon.

“Why is the north so massive,” he muttered, half annoyed, half impressed.

There was no answer. Just wind and the smell of cold stone. In any case, traveling in the dark would be stupid. He wasn’t here to prove he could stumble into a crevasse with style. So he made a decision. Shelter.

Ludger picked a spot on the lee side of the burned hill, where the rock broke the wind, and pressed his palm to the ground.

Earth answered immediately. He carved a shallow depression first, then raised walls around it like folding a lid. The structure wasn’t pretty. It didn’t need to be. It was thick stone shaped into a low, insulated pocket with a narrow entrance he could seal quickly if something decided to sniff around at night.

Twenty minutes later, he was inside a crude hideout, relatively comfortable by the standards of anyone who didn’t need velvet to sleep. He sat with his back against the stone, pulled his cloak tighter, and let his breathing slow.

Then he reached inward and touched Vitality Well again.

It warmed him from the inside, subtle but steady, keeping his core temperature stable even as the outside air tried to steal it. At the same time, he pushed it just enough to keep the skill working, just enough to feed the System repetition without draining himself into exhaustion again.

Level it fast. Stay warm. Recover. The well drew stamina in a constant, manageable trickle. He listened to the wind slide over stone, felt the shelter’s walls hold firm, and waited for sleep to take him.

This time, he didn’t pretend he could out-stubborn rest.

He let his body settle, let his mind go quiet, and used the steady rhythm of Vitality Well like a blanket, warming him, training him, and carrying him down into sleep without a fight.

Ludger lay there in the dark of his stone shelter, listening to the wind scrape over the burned hill like a file across bone.

Vitality Well kept him warm in a steady, internal way—less like a fire, more like a controlled engine. He could feel the drain in the background, the quiet cost of staying comfortable and keeping the skill active, but it was manageable. Acceptable.

His mind didn’t fully shut off.

It never did when something important was unresolved.

He thought about Valk’s palm, heat rippling through air hard enough to shove snow off stone in a straight line. About the purge trick, disgusting as it was, and what it meant: control so deep you could treat poison like an inconvenience. About how the Monk class felt wrong on paper but made perfect sense in the body.

And then the question returned, sharp and stubborn.

How does this give me the edge I actually want?

Not just “more power.” Power was easy to collect if you were willing to bleed for it.

He needed leverage against the Regent. A way to say no and have it stick. A way to keep his family safe without signing his throat over to an Empire that could rewrite agreements whenever it felt bored.

Vitality Well helped, sure.

It made him harder to exhaust. More consistent. More capable of sustained effort without breaking.

That mattered in fights. It mattered in long delves. It mattered in building projects that used to grind him down. But politics didn’t get solved by endurance alone.

And that heat-wave technique, impressive as it was, was still just another kind of force. Useful in battle, yes. Useful as intimidation, maybe.

Ludger stared into the dark, eyes half-open, and let the uncomfortable truth settle. He might have to be more creative than he’d expected. Not just stronger. Smarter in a different way.

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