Chapter 666

Ludger looked lighter when he returned home.

Not in the obvious way, he still walked like a soldier who expected the floor to betray him, still scanned corners out of habit, still carried that quiet intensity that made normal people straighten up without knowing why.

But the tightness was gone. The constant edge. The invisible pressure that sat on his shoulders whenever Torvares’ name came up.

Elaine noticed it the moment he stepped through the door. Arslan did too, even if he pretended he didn’t. Parents learned to read their children the way veterans read weather, small shifts that meant storms were coming or passing.

They didn’t ask right away. They just assumed. They knew where he’d gone. So they assumed it went well. And Ludger… Ludger felt lighter for a simpler reason. He didn’t have to grind his teeth anymore.

He didn’t have to feel that automatic irritation whenever his thoughts brushed against anything connected to Torvares, Torvares’ supply orders, Torvares’ political maneuvers, even the sound of that name in someone else’s mouth.

It wasn’t forgiveness. Not fully. But the knot had loosened. The thorn had stopped twisting every time he moved. He could think about the future without losing energy to resentment first. That mattered.

It was efficient. And for Ludger, efficiency was comfort. He dropped his coat on a chair, hung his scarf properly for once, and let himself breathe like he didn’t have to keep the whole town balanced in his head every second. He hoped the old man wouldn’t do anything like that again. Acting behind his back. Dropping secrets into his lap like they were favors. Turning Lionsguard into a hiding place without consent.

He hoped. But he also knew Torvares wasn’t stupid. Not politically. Not personally. Not after a conversation like the one they’d just had. It was hard to imagine Torvares doing anything close to that much trouble again, not when he’d finally seen what it cost, not just in strategy, but in the people it pulled into the mess.

Ludger didn’t smile. But he felt… clear. Like a window wiped clean after months of dust. And that, in its own quiet way, was a kind of victory.

The next day, Ludger decided to finish some work on the underground library.

Not because he was bored, Lionfang didn’t allow boredom, but because he finally had the mental space to

choose

what problem to tackle first. Refugees were running on rails now. The wine business had routines. Torvares had been… handled.

That left the thing Ludger actually cared about: getting stronger in ways that didn’t require another disaster as motivation. His Teacher job was improving faster than he expected.

Every time he explained something and watched it click in someone else’s head, every time a recruit corrected their stance, every time a mage stopped wasting mana, every time a labor crew learned to do the same task twice as fast, he felt that subtle system pull. The little invisible reward. The sense that his “instruction” wasn’t just leadership anymore, it was a mechanic.

Teacher Lv 65 (+3 INT, +3 DEX / level)

Skills: [Dissection of Knowledge Lv.26]

[Student Insight Lv.50]

[Guiding Words Lv.60]

[Teacher Focus Lv 60]

[Student Understanding Lv 33]

[Practical Demonstration Lv 31]

[Teacher’s Support Lv 11]

[Shared Knowledge Lv 11]

[Foundational Growth Lv.11]

Knowledge Calibration Lv.11]

[Corrective Pressure Lv.21]

[Lesson Structuring Lv.20]

— Auto-builds a clean progression path (warm-up → core concept → reps → stress test → cooldown). Reduces wasted time and prevents “learning gaps.”

[Error Tagging Lv.1]

— Marks a student’s recurring mistakes like visible tags (timing late, hips open, mana leakage). You can correct the

root pattern

instead of chasing symptoms.

[Retention Drill Lv.1]

— Turns a lesson into a short repeatable drill that “locks” it into muscle memory; improves long-term recall and keeps skills from degrading under pressure.

But improvement wasn’t the same as mastery. And Ludger wanted mastery. Fast. Because Teacher wasn’t a flashy class that won duels. It was different than that. It made

everyone around him

better.

And if he could accelerate that… Lionsguard wouldn’t just survive. It would snowball. So he’d made a plan. Manuals.

Not a single book, not some generic “how to be useful” nonsense. A series of manuals, tight, efficient guides that people could follow without him standing over their shoulders.

The underground library was a controlled place. A place where knowledge wasn’t lost in tavern gossip or forgotten after a week of hard work. With more manuals, the faster Teacher mastery would work. That was the theory, at least. And the theory made sense.

He was already mapping it out in his head as he walked: different levels, simple diagrams, drill routines, mana expenditure notes, common mistakes, safety warnings.

He figured he should make one for each elemental Overdrive. Earth was obvious, he’d basically been writing that book with his life.

But if he wanted the guild to scale, he couldn’t let everything funnel through him. He needed water, wind, fire, everything the recruits and allies could offer. One manual per element. Standardized. Repeatable. Hard to misunderstand. He was halfway down the street when the plan collided with reality.

A boy was waiting outside home like he’d been planted there.

Young. Apprentice age. Work-worn clothes with the faint soot-smell that meant forge or workshop. He stood stiffly, like he’d been practicing what to say and hadn’t liked any version of it.

Ludger slowed. The kid swallowed when he saw him approach. Ludger didn’t bother with greetings.

“What is it?” he asked.

The apprentice straightened, as if the question had physically yanked him upright.

“M-Master Raukor,” the boy said quickly. “He wants to talk to you.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly. Raukor didn’t “want to talk” unless something was either valuable or dangerous. Or both.

“When?” Ludger asked.

The boy hesitated, then blurted, “Now. He said, he said it’s important.”

Ludger stared at him for a beat, weighing the library against whatever Raukor had uncovered. Then he turned his body smoothly, already changing direction.

“Lead,” he said.

The apprentice exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since dawn, and hurried off, while Ludger followed, mind already shifting gears, wondering what kind of trouble the forge-brained analyzer had found this time.

Ludger followed the apprentice through the busy spine of Lionfang until the air changed.

Smoke. Hot metal. Oil. The steady, familiar hammer rhythm that made even anxious thoughts fall into line.

The forge was alive, workstations crowded, apprentices moving like ants with purpose, bellows breathing, sparks dancing in brief violent flashes. At the center of it all sat Raukor like a boulder that had decided it was going to learn metallurgy.

The lion beastman was waiting for him. Not pacing. Not fidgeting. Just standing there with his arms folded, tail still, eyes fixed on a table where two silver swords lay side by side.

They looked almost out of place in the forge’s grime. Too clean. Too sharp. Too

wrong

.

The metal didn’t reflect light like steel. It caught it and held it for a moment, as if the surface didn’t know how to let go. Even resting, they felt… eager. Like a weapon that remembered violence.

Ludger stepped up to the table, gaze flicking across the blades the way he assessed everything: weight, balance, risk. He looked up at Raukor.

“Learn anything new?”

Raukor grunted. It was the same as a nod. Then he finally spoke, voice rough, blunt, and unpolished like the forge itself.

“No enchantments,” he said. “No runes. No embedded arrays. No hidden script.”

Ludger’s brow furrowed slightly. That was… odd. Too clean for something that had been

summoned

.

Raukor tapped one of the blades with a thick finger. The sound rang crisp and bright.

“But,” Raukor continued, “they’re very mana-conductive.”

Ludger nodded slowly, the pieces shifting.

“That makes sense,” he said. “Their previous owner almost chopped me to pieces from a distance.”

Raukor’s ears twitched. Ludger’s eyes went a little colder as the memory surfaced, the corridor, the four blades, the pressure, the impossible reach.

“With a mana beam,” Ludger added, “in the shape of an X.”

Raukor made a sound that might’ve been agreement, but his expression didn’t change. He wasn’t interested in the story. He was interested in the implication.

“That isn’t the important part,” Raukor said.

Ludger’s gaze sharpened. “Then what is?”

Raukor leaned forward slightly, massive hands resting on the table near the swords, careful not to touch their edges. His claws flexed once, then settled.

“What it means,” Raukor said, “is that the metal exists somewhere.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. Raukor’s gaze locked onto him.

“Not as a summoned trick,” the lion beastman continued. “Not as a one-off artifact. This is material. Real. Consistent.”

He paused, then delivered the conclusion like a hammer strike.

“You probably can find the same metal on the other side of the ant labyrinth.”

The forge noise seemed to fade for a second. Ludger held still, mind instantly shifting to maps, gates, depths, and what “other side” really meant in labyrinth terms. Raukor didn’t stop.

“Like you were getting magic water from the other side of the runic golems labyrinth,” he said, voice steady. “Same pattern.”

Ludger’s jaw tightened. Because that… fit too well. Labyrinths weren’t just death traps. They were

pipelines

. Pockets of reality connected to something else, resources bleeding through like a wound that never sealed.

Magic water on one side. Alien metal on another. And ants… an entire swarm city, organized, intelligent, with a “king” that shouldn’t have existed at all. Ludger stared at the silver swords again.

They weren’t trophies anymore. They were pointers. A signpost that said:

There’s more behind the door.

Ludger stared at the blades for another heartbeat, letting the idea settle. Alien metal.

A resource that could change everything, armor that didn’t fatigue, weapons that carried mana like veins carried blood, tools that made rune work less like carving stone and more like writing on paper.

He

wanted

it. Badly. Which was exactly why he couldn’t touch it. Ludger looked up at Raukor, expression flat.

“I want that metal,” he said.

Raukor’s ears perked slightly, a faint spark of approval in his eyes. Ludger killed it with his next sentence.

“But I’m not giving the Empire an excuse to aim for my neck.”

The words came out matter-of-fact, like he was reciting a rule of physics. He gestured vaguely, as if pointing through stone and distance toward Rokram and the sealed ruin beneath it.

“The labyrinth is sealed,” Ludger added. “By capital mages loyal to the regent.”

His mouth twisted.

“I can’t go there.”

Raukor’s jaw flexed. His whiskers bristled. He looked away with a low, irritated rumble in his throat—like the idea offended him on a personal level.

Good.

Ludger understood that feeling. The frustration of being forced to wait while someone else held the keys.

“So your desire to use alien metal for forging,” Ludger said, tone dry, “is out of the question for now.”

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