Chapter 596

Shera closed her eyes for a moment.

Her posture didn’t change, but the air around her did.

It tightened, subtle pressure, like the space had been pulled taut. The mana in the clearing shifted, not swirling wildly like a spell, but aligning like something had just been given permission to happen.

Then… A flash of light snapped into existence with a soft crack.

For a heartbeat, the world was white.

And when it cleared, an eagle was circling above them, broad wings cutting clean lines through the cold air. It dipped once, then descended in a smooth spiral and landed on Shera’s shoulder like it had always belonged there.

Talons gripped fur. Feathers ruffled once. The bird’s eyes were bright and sharp, scanning Ludger like he was prey that hadn’t decided what it was yet.

Shera opened her eyes again.

“It works like this,” she said calmly.

Ludger stared at the eagle, then at Shera, then back at the eagle. No rune circle. No chant. No obvious casting sequence. Just intent, a connection, and arrival. His mind raced, then latched onto the practical question.

“Is there a limit,” Ludger asked, “to how many creatures you can make a pact with?”

Shera’s mouth twitched, almost amused.

“It depends on your talent,” she said. “But you can improve with practice.”

Ludger nodded slowly, filing it away. Capacity wasn’t fixed. That meant progression. That meant it could become a real pillar if he could grasp the fundamentals. Shera glanced at the eagle, then back to Ludger.

“But you can’t practice with creatures that already have pacts,” she said. “Not for the basics.”

Ludger frowned. “So what do I do?”

Shera gestured outward, toward the white emptiness beyond the trees.

“You find an animal,” she said. “And you tame it.”

Ludger’s eyebrows rose. “Tame?”

“Make it tolerate you,” Shera corrected. “Then you try to understand it. The feelings. The mana. The intent.” Her eyes narrowed. “If you can’t make a rabbit stop fearing you, you won’t make a monster accept you.”

The eagle shifted slightly on her shoulder, feathers settling, gaze still fixed on Ludger like it was measuring him.

Ludger nodded once.

No argument. No complaint. Just acceptance, and that was usually the most dangerous response he had.

Then he turned and left the burned hill. Not walking. Dashing.

He moved like the wind itself had taken offense at stillness, feet skimming over hardened earth, cloak snapping, body lightened by Vitality Well and sheer stubborn momentum. In seconds he was a streak between the trees, then gone into the white beyond.

Shera watched him go with the eagle perched on her shoulder, feathers ruffling in the cold air. Finding anything around here that could be tamed would take days.

She knew it. The north didn’t hand out convenient animals the way towns did. Everything that survived out here survived by being wary, sharp, and willing to bite first.

The boy would either come back with something… or the exercise would grind him down until he quit.

Either way, she’d have a lot of free time. And she didn’t mind that.

Taming animals wasn’t a trick you picked up in an afternoon. It was a skill most people needed years to learn properly, reading behavior, earning tolerance, building trust without getting your throat torn out the moment you got complacent.

The easiest targets were horses.

But horses weren’t that common in the north, and the ones that existed tended to belong to tribes who guarded them like treasure. Cats and dogs were even rarer. And if a cat or dog survived long enough in this region to be seen at all, it wouldn’t be the soft kind that slept by fires.

It would be rough. Wild. Half-wolf in attitude, even if its body wasn’t. Shera’s eagle shifted, talons tightening lightly, as if it approved of the problem. Shera snorted, eyes narrowing toward the direction Ludger had vanished.

“Good luck, boy,” she muttered. “Let’s see how much you like ‘options’ when the option is getting bitten for three days straight.” Shera went back inside, muttering to herself about impossible boys and impossible requests.

She set a small pot on the heat-stone near the vents she’d routed into her hut years ago, dropped in dried meat and a handful of bitter herbs, and waved her hand once toward the window.

“Go,” she told the eagle.

The bird hopped off her shoulder and launched into the air without hesitation, wings snapping open and catching the cold like it was nothing. In two seconds it was a dark shape over the burned hill, then a speck.

Shera stirred her breakfast and tried to enjoy the quiet. She’d barely started when she heard noise outside. Not the wind. Not the normal creak of wood settling. Footsteps. Fast. Then a deeper scrape. Then a low, irritated huff that definitely didn’t belong to a human.

Shera froze mid-stir. She didn’t want to believe the boy was back.

No one comes back that fast. Not for taming.

Annoyed, she marched to the window and yanked it open… and immediately regretted having eyes. The boy was outside.

Of course he was.

He was crouched in the bare clearing, one hand glowing faintly with healing mana, the other braced against the thick neck of a dire wolf that looked like it had eaten normal wolves for breakfast and still had room.

The beast’s eye was bruised and swollen, one side of its face mottled with dark discoloration. It was breathing hard, hackles lifting and settling as it fought between pain and instinct.

Ludger, meanwhile, looked completely unconcerned, focused the way he always was when he’d decided something was “a problem” and therefore had to be solved. Even if he had to land a few punches.

His healing finished in a clean pulse. The bruising faded. The swelling eased. The wolf blinked, then shook its head like it couldn’t believe the pain was gone. Then it did what any sensible predator would do when a strange hairless creature touched it. It bit Ludger’s arm. Hard.

Shera’s eyebrows shot up.

The wolf’s jaws clamped down with enough force to crack bone, and met metal instead.

Ludger’s arm guards and extensor plates took the bite like a wall. The beast’s teeth scraped, slid, and found nothing but hardened protection. It growled, bit again, and again, increasingly offended that the universe had decided Ludger was made of unchewable materials.

Ludger didn’t even flinch. He just watched it chew on his forearm like it was testing a tool.

Eventually the wolf got tired of biting metal. Its growl turned into a frustrated huff, and it tried to pull away head jerking, body twisting to leave.

Ludger moved faster.

He shifted his grip, slid his other hand up behind the wolf’s jawline, and, using the kind of calm force that made it feel

worse

, pressed the beast’s head down onto his lap.

The wolf froze, startled by the audacity more than the strength. Ludger immediately began patting it. Not gentle. Not comforting.

Forceful, repetitive pats right on the side of the neck and top of the head, like he was reassuring a dangerous weapon that it had been properly stored.

“There,” Ludger said, tone absurdly mild. “Stop being dramatic.”

The dire wolf growled low, muscles bunching to resist… and Ludger kept patting, completely unfazed, his armored forearm still offered like a chew toy made of spite.

Shera stared out the window, spoon forgotten in her hand. Her mouth opened.

Closed. Then opened again.

“…What,” she said flatly, “did you do?”

Outside, Ludger didn’t look up.

“I found something to tame,” he replied, as if this explained everything.

The dire wolf, head still pinned to his lap, stopped biting and just glared forward with the exhausted hatred of an apex predator forced into a situation it couldn’t understand.

Ludger patted it again. Hard.

And Shera realized, slowly, incredulously—that the boy wasn’t trying to

befriend

the creature the way normal people did.

He was trying to wear it down with sheer persistence and shamelessness. Which was… insane. Also, infuriatingly, not entirely stupid.

Shera tried to ignore him. She really did.

She ate her breakfast, told herself it wasn’t her problem, and focused on the simple comfort of warm food in a cold world.

Then, five minutes later, she found herself at the window again. Just a quick look. Just to confirm the boy hadn’t been eaten.

Outside, Ludger was still there, sitting in the dirt like a rock that had decided it was a chair, the dire wolf’s head still pressed to his lap. The beast looked offended by existence.

Shera went back to her pot. Ten minutes later, she checked again.

The wolf was still struggling, but less. Not because it had agreed, because it had spent too much energy biting metal and failing.

Shera scowled and returned to her chores. An hour later, she checked again.

Ludger was still patting it. Same rhythm. Same calm. Like he was sanding down a stubborn piece of wood with his hands. The dire wolf had stopped trying to leave. Its ears twitched. Its eyes narrowed. It breathed slower. Still tense, but no longer frantic.

Shera muttered something rude and forced herself to stop looking. She failed. She checked again around midday. The wolf’s body had shifted closer. Not fully relaxed, but… resting. Like it had decided resistance was expensive and this strange armored creature wasn’t immediately dangerous, just annoying.

By late afternoon, when Shera finally checked again, she paused with the window half-open and stared. The dire wolf was resting its head on Ludger’s lap like it was only natural.

Not limp. Not trusting like a pet. But comfortable in the way a predator got when it accepted that the current situation wasn’t worth fighting. Ludger’s hand moved slowly over its fur, patting and scratching in a steady rhythm.

Shera stared, jaw tight.

This is ridiculous.

Then she checked again a little later and almost dropped the window latch.

Ludger was on all fours. Right in front of the dire wolf’s face. Staring at it with intense focus, eyes narrowed like he was trying to read its thoughts through its pupils.

The wolf stared back, unblinking. It looked like two animals measuring dominance, except one of them was a boy with too much mana and not enough shame.

Shera shut the window with a scowl and told herself she was done. She checked again anyway.

This time, Ludger was standing and giving the wolf… orders.

“Jump.”

The dire wolf blinked.

Ludger pointed. “Jump.”

The wolf hopped once, awkward, uncertain.

“Good,” Ludger said. “Backflip.”

Shera froze.

The wolf stared at him like he’d just demanded it recite poetry.

“Sit.”

The wolf sat. Slowly, like it was humoring him.

“Lay down.”

The wolf lay down.

Ludger nodded like this was the most normal thing in the world. “Good.” Shera stared through the window as if reality had personally insulted her. She lifted both hands and massaged her eyebrows hard, like she could squeeze the madness out of her skull.

“Am I having a fever dream,” she muttered, “or is that boy actually giving orders to a dire wolf like it’s a trained dog?”

Outside, Ludger looked completely serious. The wolf, still very much a wild predator, followed the next command with a reluctant flick of its ears.

And Shera, despite herself, felt the first crack in her certainty. Not admiration. Not yet. Just the uncomfortable realization that whatever the boy was… He wasn’t normal. And normal rules weren’t applying.

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