Chapter 620

The Regent read the last line again.

Warden of the Frontier Holdings.

A title that sounded loyal while quietly implying

this is mine to manage.

His fingers tightened just slightly, the only visible motion. The parchment made a soft, dry sound under pressure. Polite refusal. Logical explanations.

A careful framing that made it sound like Torvares was protecting the Realm from chaos, rather than protecting a border guild from control. And the worst part? It was written well enough that punishing it openly would look petty.

The Regent’s eyes lifted off the parchment for a moment, unfocused, staring through the candlelit air as if he could see the frontier from here. Autonomy. Alliances. Labyrinths. “Misinterpretation.”

All the right words. All the right shields. He lowered his gaze again and read it once more, slower. Not because he didn’t understand it. Because he did. And understanding didn’t make it acceptable.

Ludger watched from the stone ledge with his arms folded, expression flat in the way that usually meant he was doing three calculations at once and hating all of them. Below him, the training pool churned.

Cold water, clear enough that you could see flashes, steel, bubbles, and the pale blur of something moving that shouldn’t have been able to move at all.

His stone golem stood deep beneath the surface, a hulking silhouette of carved rock and packed sand bound together by steady mana control. It wasn’t a true runic golem. No engraved core. No permanent logic lattice. Just Ludger’s control, threaded through it like invisible reins.

Close enough, though. Close enough to teach men not to die. The northerners were watching it like wolves watched a wounded elk. Not fear. Not awe. Assessment.

“Again,” Sigrid barked, her voice carrying over the slap of water.

Four of them dove in, broad shoulders, braided hair, axes held high like the tools were holy. They didn’t get the luxury of breathing room. Ludger didn’t give it.

The golem’s arms blurred under the surface.

Stone bullets erupted from its forearms, compact spheres that shot forward in tight bursts,

thunk-thunk-thunk

, as if an unseen slinger was firing point-blank. Each shot made the water jump. Each shot could crack a rib through leather if it hit right.

The northerners reacted before the third volley. Axes snapped up, blades angled like shields. Stone struck steel in sharp, ugly impacts. The weapons jerked. Arms tensed. Water frothed around them as they absorbed the force with their whole bodies, shoulders down, cores braced, feet digging for traction on slick stone.

Good.

Three days ago, they would’ve eaten those shots. Two days ago, they would’ve tried to dodge and failed. Now they were reading the rhythm, watching the golem’s shoulders, the way the mana made its joints tighten before a burst.

They weren’t faster in the way city recruits got “faster” when they finally learned to stop thinking mid-swing. They were faster the way predators were fast. Decisive. Efficient. Mean.

The moment the barrage slowed, they surged forward. Water exploded around their thighs as they charged, axes biting down in hard, clean arcs.

The golem met them with both arms, sweeping, crushing. Ludger tightened his grip. He made it

heavy

, made it

real

, made the strike land with the same dead weight a runic construct carried when it didn’t care what your bones thought about the matter.

They didn’t get knocked back. They slid, grimacing, feet skating, then adjusted. Two of them hooked the golem’s forearm with the notches of their axes like they were snagging a log in a river. The other two came in high and low.

Axe heads flashed. Stone arms cracked.

Chunks snapped free underwater with muffled, brutal thuds,

thoom, thoom

, and the golem’s right arm sheared off at the elbow. Its left followed a heartbeat later, severed clean enough that Ludger felt a strange, stupid satisfaction.

They’d learned where to hit. They’d learned when to commit. They’d learned not to hesitate just because something looked bigger than it should. Ludger exhaled through his nose, slow. His eyes tracked their footwork, the timing, the way they coordinated without needing to shout.

Ready. Not for glory. Not for a story. Ready for a job.

He loosened his mana control and the golem sank a half-step, posture slackening like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The northerners didn’t relax. They stayed braced, weapons up, waiting for the trick.

Ludger didn’t give them one. Sigrid waded to the edge of the tank and slapped the water with her palm, a sharp crack that cut through the moment.

“That’s enough,” she said. “Out.”

A few of them looked like they wanted to argue, wanted one more round, wanted to prove something. Then they saw her face and decided their pride could survive until tomorrow. They climbed out, dripping and steaming in the cold air, muscles tight and eyes bright. Sigrid pointed toward the shelters.

“Leave the water tank. Rest for the day. Eat. Sleep.”

The northerners grumbled, because grumbling was their version of obedience, and dispersed. Ludger stayed on the ledge, watching them go. Sigrid crossed her arms and watched the northerners peel off toward the shelters, dripping and grumbling like they hadn’t just turned a stone golem into gravel underwater.

Then she glanced back at Ludger.

“I’m going with this group,” she said, like she was stating the weather. “Just to be safe.”

Ludger didn’t even blink. “I’ll go too.”

Sigrid’s eyes narrowed. Not hostile. Just… tired. The kind of tired you got from dragging competent people toward competence faster than they wanted to move.

“No,” she said.

Ludger’s brow twitched a fraction. “I need to make sure they don’t—”

“You need to stay,” Sigrid cut in, voice flat and final. “They can handle it. Your job is to tell them what to do. Not hover behind them like a nervous mother hen with a knife.”

Ludger’s mouth opened, then shut again.

He looked down at the water tank, at the ripples still spreading where his golem had sunk. Silence hung for a few seconds.

Then he exhaled. “Fine.”

Sigrid didn’t relax. She just waited, because she knew him.

Ludger’s eyes shifted back to her. “But we’ll send a couple guild members with Healing Touch. Just in case.”

“That’s reasonable,” Sigrid allowed.

Ludger nodded once, then kept going, because he couldn’t help himself.

“And we’ll have them wear the bracers. The ones with the Overdrive runes. If something goes wrong, they can—”

“Stop.” Sigrid held up a hand like she was physically blocking his words.

Ludger paused mid-sentence, lips pressed into a line. Sigrid stepped closer until she was near enough that he couldn’t ignore her without it being an active choice.

“If you keep stacking safety nets,” she said, “then everything we did the last month becomes useless.”

Ludger’s eyes sharpened. “That’s not—”

“It is,” Sigrid said, calm and brutal. “Training isn’t real if you remove every consequence. If they go out with your bracers, your runes, your little tricks that solve problems before they happen, then they aren’t learning how to move without you.”

She jabbed a thumb toward the shelters where the northerners were disappearing.

“You’ve made them faster. Smarter. You’ve taught them how to fight in water and not panic when stone starts flying. Now let that

stick.

”

Ludger stared at her. His mind was clearly spinning. Risk assessment, probability, political fallout, wolves, rumors, the Regent’s deadline, everything in his world was a lever and he was used to pulling them himself.

Finally, he clicked his tongue quietly.

“…Healing Touch stays,” he said, stubborn in the smallest possible way. “That’s not a crutch. That’s just not being stupid.”

Sigrid’s mouth twitched like she wanted to smile but refused on principle.

“Fine. Two healers,” she said. “No extra toys. You give clear instructions, they follow them, and if they can’t handle that, then they weren’t ready for magic water in the first place.”

Ludger looked away, jaw tight. Then he nodded once, short, sharp, like he was sealing a contract in his head.

“Clear instructions,” he echoed.

Sigrid clapped him once on the shoulder, hard enough to mean something.

“Exactly,” she said. “And for once, Ludger… let them earn it.”

Yvar had already done what Yvar always did, quietly turned chaos into a checklist.

When Ludger returned to the guild office, there were stacked crates marked with neat chalk symbols, bundles of cold-weather wraps tied in identical knots, and enough dried rations to make a caravan feel briefly confident about the concept of tomorrow. Rope. Lantern oil. Spare axe hafts. Two sealed jars of healing salve with

DO NOT OPEN UNLESS BLEEDING

written in Yvar’s careful hand.

And, of course, meat. So much meat. It wasn’t even subtle. Someone had dragged in a whole smoked haunch that looked like it had once been a respectable animal with dreams and a family. Ludger stared at the pile for a long moment, then did the math without meaning to.

Considering how much the northerners ate, he wondered if they were fuel-efficient enough for the mission to bring any real profits. Northerners. Long travel. The margins started to look… optimistic.

He pushed the thought aside before it could nest. Profit wasn’t the point right now. Survival and leverage were. Almost ten days had passed since they’d sent their reply to the Regent. The answer hadn’t changed in the meantime. Arslan had gotten Ludger’s message, had listened, had paced once around the manor like a caged beast, and then, finally, had decided to say no.

Torvares hadn’t insisted. Not this time.

Lord Torvares had looked at the deadline, looked at the offer dressed up as a favor, and treated it like what it was: a collar with velvet lining. So now they waited. Waited for the Regent to take the next step.

Waited for the squeeze to start, slow, polite, and deliberately deniable.

A merchant delayed here. A permit denied there. A missing shipment, a sudden tax, an “inspection.” Nothing that looked like war, but all of it designed to make people whisper that the Lionsguard had gotten too big for their boots.

Ludger could already hear the whispers in his head.

Dire wolves. Refused a title. Building walls. Training northerners.

Preparing for something.

The funny part was that, for once, they weren’t entirely wrong. He just wasn’t planning to play the Regent’s game on the Regent’s schedule.

He looked at the map spread across his desk, Lionfang, the roads, the stone rail segments he’d already laid, the bottlenecks. The stone rails were still mostly a guild advantage. Fast, secure, controllable.

Which meant they were also a target. If the Regent wanted to hurt them, he wouldn’t swing at the wolves first. He’d swing at the lifeline. Ludger tapped the map with two fingers.

“Then we make the lifeline bigger,” he muttered.

Not in a heroic way. Not in a rebellious banner-waving way.

In a

logistics wins wars before wars start

way.

He would expand the stone rails. Push them outward. Make them practical. Make them something the entire region started to rely on. Merchants, farmers, travelers, anyone with coin and the sense to pay for safe, fast transport.

Accessible even for non-guild members. As long as they paid for it. Because once the rails weren’t just a Lionsguard tool… once they became a regional artery… Then any attempt to choke them would choke everyone. And that meant the Regent would have to either back off… or step into the light and admit what he was doing.

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