Ludger drew a long, steady breath, letting his eyes stay closed as he extended one hand toward the packed dirt in front of him. Doesn’t have to be a wall. Just a dent. A shift. Anything.
He let his mana seep outward, not pushing but feeling for the pulse of the ground the way Gaius had described. The soil under his palm felt coo...
2025-09-30 15:15:38 +0000 UTC View PostLudger’s eyes sharpened as he stepped a little closer. “Then tell me this—how exactly do you manipulate the mana in the earth? Not just feel it, but move it. And if someone has a Spiritual Core…” he tapped his chest lightly, “…does that make it easier?”
For the first time, Gaius didn’t answer right away. His bloo...
2025-09-30 15:14:29 +0000 UTC View PostThe next bolt snapped from Ludger’s palm, faster this time. Viola yelped, jerking sideways at the last moment. The mana sphere whizzed past her ear, close enough that she felt the heat.
Another came a heartbeat later, then another.
She swung once, splintering one apart, then stumbled backward to dodge the next. Her breath came shar...
2025-09-30 15:13:42 +0000 UTC View PostThey walked the length of the market street, Ludger slowing their pace just enough to point things out.
“See that?” He nodded toward a vendor piling golden apples high on a cloth-covered crate. “The brightest fruit on top, the bruised ones underneath. Don’t pay until you check the bottom.”
Viola leaned in, squinting. “Oh...
2025-09-29 15:16:53 +0000 UTC View PostViola slammed her palms on the table, glaring. “Grandfather wouldn’t send us here for nothing. Why would he pick someone like you?!”
That finally made the man pause. He lifted his head, bloodshot eyes squinting at her, and for the first time there was something sharper under the haze.
“Someone like me, huh?” His la...
2025-09-29 15:15:26 +0000 UTC View PostThe guildhall’s doors groaned as Ludger pushed them open. Dust motes swirled in the stale air, disturbed for the first time in days. The place was cavernous but empty—rows of tables overturned or left to rot, a long counter lined with cracked mugs and dried stains of ale. Cobwebs stretched lazily across the beams above, and the smell of mild...
2025-09-29 15:14:20 +0000 UTC View PostBy the second day, the road curved over a low ridge, and the city finally came into view.
The walls rose from the valley like a squat fortress of stone, thick and wide, not tall or elegant like the noble estates close to the capital. The towers were stumpy, built more for function than grandeur. Beyond them, chimneys poked from the cluster...
2025-09-29 15:13:13 +0000 UTC View PostHer voice came small, hesitant. “…If I stay, does that mean I’m running from home?”
Arslan crouched a little, meeting her eyes with a grin that was gentler now. “No. It means you’re choosing where you’ll grow the most. Your home isn’t going anywhere. Your grandfather isn’t going anywhere.” His grin widened again, wolfis...
2025-09-28 15:22:50 +0000 UTC View PostThe arrangement hadn’t even cooled before a shadow fell across the yard.
“Ludger.”
Elaine’s voice cut sharper than any blade. She stood at the entrance, arms folded, eyes glowing faintly with that aura that made even seasoned mercenaries sweat. Star Widow’s Wrath coiled invisible around her shoulders. Viola groaned under he...
2025-09-28 15:21:28 +0000 UTC View PostViola planted her wooden sword into the dirt and crossed her arms, still giving him that sharp, suspicious glare.
“You’re so weird,” she muttered. “Who suddenly decides they want to learn how to teach? Normal people just… learn and fight. Not…” She waved vaguely at him. “…whatever this is.”
Ludger smirked...
2025-09-28 15:20:18 +0000 UTC View PostThe next morning, after breakfast, Ludger asked his mother to step out into the backyard with him. Elaine followed, wiping her hands on a cloth, her curious gaze narrowing as they crossed the threshold.
“What is it you want to show me?” she asked, her voice half-serious, half-playful. Then her lips curved into a sly smile. “Don’t t...
2025-09-28 15:19:03 +0000 UTC View PostThey reached home the next day, the walls rising steady and familiar after days of smoke and ruin. Viola, still stiff from their spar and with bruises she didn’t want her grandfather to see, chose to return with Ludger instead of heading straight for her own home. Pride could wait—comfort couldn’t.
The moment they stepped through the...
2025-09-27 15:14:58 +0000 UTC View PostWhen Ludger stepped out of the tent, the morning light struck his eyes. Just a few paces away, Viola stood with her arms folded, waiting.
Her face fell the moment she saw him. “So… you didn’t change his mind.”
She tried to sound indifferent, but the disappointment was written plain across her features. She had expected him to...
2025-09-27 15:13:46 +0000 UTC View PostThe next morning, Ludger woke to the clang of hammers and the rasp of saws. For a moment, he thought it was another battle—the rhythm of impact, the groaning of wood—but when he pushed himself up and peered outside the tent, the truth became clear.
Soldiers were working. Not training, not drilling, not patrolling—but repairing.
The work never stopped.
Through the rest of the day, Ludger’s world narrowed to blood, sweat, and glowing hands. The wounded never ceased—soldiers dragging comrades with broken ribs, others coughing up soot, others half-dead but refusing to let go of their weapons. Ludger moved with Aronia from one to the next, healing until his core b...
2025-09-27 15:11:37 +0000 UTC View PostThe shamans lifted their staves again, their voices rising into a chant even more dreadful than before. Mana thickened, flames coiling overhead like serpents ready to strike. Soldiers braced, their bodies trembling, knowing the next wave might end them.
Then it happened.
One shaman lurched suddenly, choking on his own words. His staf...
2025-09-26 15:15:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe clash at the barricades turned savage in seconds.
The barbarians fought like rabid beasts, hurling themselves against the wedge with no fear of death. One man’s arm hung useless at his side, bone jutting through the flesh—yet he kept swinging his rusted axe with the other, teeth bared in a spray of blood. Another had half his ribs ...
2025-09-26 15:13:25 +0000 UTC View PostThe closer they came, the heavier the air grew.
At first, it was just the steady grind of boots and hooves, the rattle of shields, the wheeze of leather straps straining under the weight of armor. But as the taken town rose higher in their view, the atmosphere shifted. Soldiers stopped whispering. They stopped laughing. The only sound was ...
2025-09-26 15:12:03 +0000 UTC View PostThe tent went quiet after Torvares’s decree. Captains grumbled, Arslan scowled, Viola smirked, but Ludger stood still, staring at the map. The arrowhead formation. Him in the center. He’d thought he was dragged here as a token, a child shoved into grown men’s games. But no—this wasn’t a council. This was a lesson. Lord Torvares wanted ...
2025-09-25 15:20:26 +0000 UTC View PostLudger watched him. Under the bravado and the infinite, dangerous arrogance was something a child could touch: the absolute, naked fear of legacy. Arslan wasn’t afraid of his own end. He was terrified of leaving Ludger and Viola with nothing but hard lessons and sharper knives.
“Promise me one thing,” Arslan said then, the sound a ha...
2025-09-25 15:19:05 +0000 UTC View PostThe clash of blade and footwork drew louder whispers, more boots crunching into a loose circle around the spar. Even exhausted men who had been too tired to lift their heads now stood straighter, eyes sharp with something close to hope.
The tent flap snapped open.
Lord Torvares stormed out, cloak dragging through the dust, his scowl ...
2025-09-25 15:17:25 +0000 UTC View PostLudger’s eyes lingered on the wounded for a moment longer before he finally asked, voice low but steady,
“Where are they? The barbarians.”
Arslan followed his son’s gaze to the horizon. He lifted a hand and pointed westward, past the haze of smoke and broken ground, to where jagged walls rose in the distance.
“There,...
2025-09-24 15:24:28 +0000 UTC View PostLord Torvares’s eyes blazed, but when Viola squared her shoulders and opened her mouth to fire back, he cut her off with a growl.
“Not here.”
His cloak whipped as he turned, gesturing sharply toward his tent. Viola followed without hesitation, fire meeting fire. Everyone in earshot knew if they argued in the open, their voices ...
2025-09-24 15:23:30 +0000 UTC View PostThey let the grove hold them a while longer, catching their breaths and letting the morning burn into midday. By the time the sun had begun its slow arc west, they were moving again.
The heat pressed down heavier than the night air had, sweat clinging to their backs as the fields stretched wide and endless around them. They carried little,...
2025-09-24 15:22:15 +0000 UTC View PostLudger kept the thoughts locked behind his teeth. No point voicing them—not to Viola, who would only double down on her recklessness, and not to Luna, who already carried enough weight in silence.
So he ran.
The three of them cut across the plains, shadows gliding over the grass, the night air cold in their lungs. Viola’s breathi...
2025-09-23 15:31:12 +0000 UTC View PostLudger let the silence hang for a moment longer, then exhaled through his nose. His smirk didn’t come this time—only a steady, level gaze as he answered.
“Fine. If she runs off to do something stupid, I’ll be there to drag her back in one piece. You have my word.”
Elaine’s shoulders sagged, the tension easing just slightl...
2025-09-23 15:29:59 +0000 UTC View PostAs he jogged back through the fields toward the city, Ludger wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his armguard. The stench of goblin blood clung stubbornly, seeping into the leather, soaking into his shirt.
Too obvious. If Luna caught it again, sooner or later Elaine will too.
He slowed, exhaled through his nose, and r...
2025-09-23 15:28:42 +0000 UTC View PostTwo months of relentless grind bore fruit. Ludger’s weighted runs, his endless bursts of Dash and Quickstride, his nights of mana-burning discipline—piece by piece, they stacked into something solid.
When he tested the road again, the world blurred beneath his feet, lungs pulling steady even as the wind tore past. The familiar pressure...
2025-09-22 15:33:16 +0000 UTC View PostThe next morning, the courtyard rang with Arslan’s voice, already barking corrections at Viola as she hacked at a training dummy. Ludger arrived a little later, shin guards strapped on tight—heavier now, each lined with slim pieces of iron he’d slid inside at dawn.
Arslan raised an eyebrow at the way Ludger tightened the straps, then...
2025-09-22 15:32:01 +0000 UTC View PostArslan leaned forward on his knees, his usual grin dulled into something heavier. “The border didn’t fall, but it was close. Too close.”
Selene and Aleia crossed her arms, her jaw tight. Harold just stared at the ground, unusually quiet. Cor polished his spectacles, though the motion looked more like a distraction than habit.
...
2025-09-22 15:31:05 +0000 UTC View Post