Chapter 595

Shera’s eyes snapped to the ground. Only now did she notice the lines.

Subtle at first, hardened earth seams that cut through the clearing in a pattern too regular to be natural. They looked like reinforced channels, smooth and firm, like someone had compacted the soil with intent.

At a glance, you could mistake them for a drainage system. Or a foundation. Or… writing. Nothing made sense.

Shera crouched, running her fingers over one of the lines. It was solid, too solid for normal dirt. The pattern bent and curved in a way that made her stomach itch, because it looked like structure disguised as landscaping.

She frowned harder.

“What is this?” she asked.

Ludger’s answer came out calm and irritatingly casual.

“A deal,” he said. “Or a lesson. Depends what you choose.”

Shera looked up at him, eyes narrowed, the disbelief finally curdling into suspicion. Because whatever this boy was, he hadn’t just improved the surroundings. He’d built something under her feet… and expected her to notice.

Shera’s eyes stayed on the hardened lines in the ground for another heartbeat, then she stood and looked at Ludger with the kind of blunt suspicion that didn’t bother with politeness.

“Show me,” she said. “Exactly what you did. I want to see it with my own eyes.”

Ludger sighed softly, like the request was a mild inconvenience.

“I don’t like to show off,” he said.

He paused, then added in the same flat tone, “But I might as well do it once in a while.”

Shera didn’t react. She just stared, waiting.

Ludger tilted his head. “After I show you… are you going to teach me?”

Shera’s expression didn’t soften. “I’ll think about it.”

Ludger blinked once. Then his mouth twitched.

“You drive a hard bargain.”

Shera crossed her arms, unimpressed. Ludger turned and walked a short distance into the clearing, stopping near one of the younger trees, thin trunk, flexible, new growth still soft enough that you could tell it hadn’t been here yesterday.

He crouched and placed his palm against the ground at its base. Earth shifted with a quiet grind.

He didn’t rip it up roughly. He coaxed it out, lifting a small sapling with its roots intact, wrapped in a tight clump of soil like a packed fist. He set it down a few paces away on bare ground, where it looked pitifully small in the open space.

Then Ludger inhaled. And the air changed. He didn’t chant like a shaman. He didn’t carve runes. He didn’t build a structure. He simply… spoke to the living thing in front of him with mana.

“All at once,” he murmured, more to himself than to Shera.

Herbal Whisper.

Plant Growth.

Nature’s Breath.

Life Bloom.

The words weren’t loud, but they carried weight, like keys turning in locks. Shera felt the mana hit the sapling like a warm wave. It shuddered. Then it started to grow. Not slowly. Not naturally.

In five minutes, it expanded in all directions, roots drilling down, trunk thickening, bark forming, branches splitting and reaching outward with hungry speed. Leaves unfurled in quick, trembling bursts. The soil around it compacted as the roots pushed and anchored, stabilizing the ground like a living net.

The sapling became a tree. A real one.

By the time Ludger released the skill chain, the trunk stood tall, roughly his height, branches spread wide enough to cast a small shadow, leaves still twitching as if the tree was surprised to exist so quickly.

Ludger stepped back, breathing steady, as if he’d just done a simple exercise.

He glanced at Shera.

“There,” he said. “That’s the method.”

Shera stared at the new tree, then at him, frowning deeper because the demonstration hadn’t just answered her question. It had raised worse ones. Because nobody grew a forest overnight unless they were either insane… or capable. And capability, in the north, always came with a price.

Shera stared at the new tree for a long moment, as if waiting for it to collapse and prove the world was still sane. It didn’t. The leaves trembled in the wind like they were proud of surviving five minutes of existence.

Shera slowly turned her head back to Ludger.

“Why?” she asked, voice flat. “Why do you want to learn more when you’re already… this capable?”

Ludger didn’t take it as praise. He didn’t even look pleased. He just shrugged slightly, like the answer was obvious.

“People start falling the moment they get satisfied with where they are,” he said. “They stop sharpening themselves. They stop paying attention.”

He looked at his hands briefly, dusty, steady, then back at her.

“I enjoy improving,” Ludger continued. “Learning new things. It keeps me alive.”

Shera’s eyes narrowed. “Alive from what?”

Ludger’s mouth tightened for half a heartbeat.

“From… the world,” he said simply. “From people who decide they want what I build.”

He gestured vaguely toward the burned hill and the endless north beyond it, as if the whole landscape counted as an argument.

“And,” Ludger added, voice calm, “I want more options.”

Shera tilted her head. “Options.”

Ludger nodded once. “To solve problems.”

He paused, then his tone went a shade drier.

“As much as I like it, I can’t solve everything with punches and kicks.”

Shera’s mouth twitched like she was about to laugh, then decided against it. Ludger’s eyes stayed steady.

“I need tools,” he said. “Different ones. Because if all you have is violence, then every situation becomes a fight.” He glanced at her hut, at the trees, at the cleared ground. “And fights… are expensive.”

Shera studied him in silence.

Then she looked back at the hardened lines in the soil, at the “drainage system” that wasn’t a drainage system, and the suspicion in her face sharpened.

Because a boy who thought like that wasn’t chasing power for ego. He was building a toolbox. And people who built toolboxes were dangerous in a way fists never were.

Shera studied Ludger for another long moment, then finally exhaled through her nose like she was accepting an annoyance she couldn’t fully justify.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll teach you a bit.”

Ludger didn’t celebrate. He just nodded, like this was the expected outcome of persistence plus a forest.

“But,” Shera added immediately, eyes narrowing, “I won’t waste time if you have no talent.”

“That’s fine,” Ludger said. “I only want to learn a bit. That’s all I’m asking for.”

Shera’s gaze flicked over him again, then she turned and walked a few steps away from the hut, gesturing for him to follow. She stopped on a patch of bare earth where the soil was firm and the windbreak Ludger had built dulled the bite of the north.

Then she spoke, simple and blunt.

“I’m a summoner.”

Ludger blinked. Once. Twice. Then again, like his brain needed to catch up. That was… very different from anything he’d expected. Very different from anything any northerner he knew had ever talked about.

Northerners fought with bodies and rage and shaman tricks that felt like instincts given teeth. Summoning? That sounded like magical academy nonsense.

Except Shera didn’t look like an academy anything.

“I can make pacts,” Shera continued, “with animals and monsters.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. “Pacts.”

She nodded, expression flat. “I call them to help me in battle.”

A pause.

“For a price.”

Ludger swallowed once. “How can you do that?”

Shera’s gaze sharpened, as if she’d been waiting for that question.

“It’s an art of my family,” she said. “Passed down through generations.”

She tapped her chest lightly with two fingers, not prideful, just factual.

“The basics of my power,” Shera explained, “is understanding animals and beasts.”

Ludger’s brow furrowed. “Understanding.”

“Not ‘watch them from far away and think you understand,’” Shera said, voice slightly harsher. “Real understanding. Their fear. Their hunger. Their instincts. Their boundaries. What they’ll accept. What they’ll never accept.”

She looked at him as if daring him to dismiss it as soft.

“Without that,” she said, “no one can learn it.”

Ludger’s eyes stayed locked on her, attention fully hooked now. Shera’s mouth tightened slightly.

“In five hundred years of my family’s story,” she said, “we never managed to teach anyone outside our bloodline.”

Ludger blinked again. “Never?”

Shera shook her head once. “We tried many times.”

Her gaze drifted briefly toward the burned hill, toward the bones scattered like old warnings.

“They didn’t have the sense for it,” she said. “Or they couldn’t hold a pact. Or they didn’t understand what it costs.” Her eyes returned to Ludger. “So they failed.”

Ludger exhaled slowly. A family art. Five hundred years. Never successfully taught to an outsider. That wasn’t convenient. That was rare.

And rare things were either priceless… Or dangerous enough to kill you for thinking you deserved them.

Ludger leaned forward slightly, interest cutting through his usual calm.

“How can you understand animals and monsters?” he asked. “What does that actually mean?”

Shera didn’t look impressed by the question. If anything, she looked like she’d had to answer it a hundred times and hated every version of it.

“I understand them without effort,” she said.

Ludger’s brow furrowed. “Without effort?”

She shrugged. “If I have to explain it simply…” Her eyes narrowed as she searched for words that didn’t make it sound like nonsense. “I read their feelings through their mana.”

Ludger blinked once, slow. Mana-feelings. Not thoughts. Not language. Emotion in the flow.

Shera continued, voice steady. “It takes time to make a creature friendly enough. Trust matters. Tolerance matters. Some creatures never accept you.”

She held up one finger.

“But once it happens,” she said, “you can imprint your mana on it.”

Ludger’s eyes sharpened. “Imprint.”

“A mark,” Shera explained. “Not a brand. Not control. More like… a connection.” Her mouth tightened. “A thread you can tug.”

“And then you can call it?” Ludger asked.

Shera nodded. “Whenever you want, within reason. As long as the creature is alive.”

That last part was said flat, like a warning disguised as a condition. Ludger filed it away immediately. Alive meant vulnerable. Alive meant attachment. Alive meant your “tool” could die.

He didn’t like that. But he didn’t let it show. He asked the next question instead.

“Can they grow stronger?”

Shera’s expression shifted. Serious now. Sharp enough to cut.

“Yes,” she said. “They can.”

Ludger’s mind immediately spun forward, pacts scaled like classes, summons trained and leveled, a private army that didn’t care about imperial paperwork.

Shera watched his eyes and seemed to read the direction of the thought before he could speak it.

“Many people have thought of using them like weapons of war,” she said quietly.

Ludger didn’t deny it. He didn’t confirm it either. Shera’s gaze held him, unblinking.

“And those thoughts alone,” she continued, voice firm, “make them impossible to become summoners.”

Ludger’s eyebrows twitched. “Why?”

“Because the creatures understand your goals,” Shera said. “Through mana. Through intent. Through the way your mind presses against the thread.”

Her jaw tightened slightly.

“If you look at them like tools,” she said, “they feel it. If you look at them like disposable weapons, they feel it. And they will never accept your imprint.”

Silence hung for a beat. Ludger stared at her, mind recalibrating. Summoning wasn’t control. It was a relationship, earned, not taken. And suddenly he understood why her family couldn’t teach it easily.

You couldn’t force this art open. The moment you tried, it closed.

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