A week passed after Ludger returned home.
Viola went back to Torvares territory. Luna as well. Elira headed back to Maris with far more to think about than when she had first come north. For the first time in a while, Lionfang felt almost quiet around Ludger.
Not truly quiet, of course. That would have been too generous.
There were still guild matters, logistics, patrols, monster materials, training schedules, and the usual stream of problems that seemed to gather around him like flies around blood. But compared to infiltrating the capital, fighting a living fortress in the castle garden, and then discovering that noble families were now openly extracting prisoners from each other under the Regent’s nose, this counted as peace.
So Ludger took it. At least what little of it he was allowed to keep. That didn’t mean he let the others rest idly.
Before they separated, he had given each of them homework.
Actual useful homework, not the kind adults handed children when they wanted to feel productive without achieving anything.
Elira’s assignment was the easiest to define. She had to keep working on her Spiritual Core.
Her control was good. Better than good, honestly. Precise, sharp, and unusually efficient for someone her age. Her cryomancy had real potential, and her instincts with ranged pressure were solid. But her mana pool was too average. That limitation would become more and more obvious the stronger her techniques got.
A precise mage with shallow reserves was still just a mage who ran out of options too quickly. So Ludger had made the priority clear. Build the core. Stabilize the flow. Increase her capacity until the rest of her talent stopped being strangled by something so basic.
He had no doubt Elira would throw herself at the training with unhealthy enthusiasm, especially now that she had seen more clearly what kind of monsters existed beyond ordinary guild work.
Viola’s homework was more complicated. She needed to master the variations of elemental overdrive and switch between them seamlessly.
That had become even more important now that she had started leaning into dual wielding. Once a fighter committed to that kind of style, the usual weaknesses became more dangerous. Less room for error. Less room for awkward transitions. Less forgiveness if the enemy forced the wrong exchange at the wrong time.
Which meant she needed her bases covered as much as possible.
If one form of overdrive favored explosive power, another speed, another sharper edge control, then Viola had to stop treating them like separate tools she reached for one at a time. She had to start moving between them naturally, flowing from one to the next without that tiny dead moment where hesitation could get her killed.
Ludger had been very clear about that. A fighter who dual-wielded without adaptable rhythm was just asking stronger opponents to dissect her. Viola, naturally, had looked annoyed when he explained it that bluntly. Which probably meant she understood perfectly.
As for Luna, Ludger had given her something narrower but nastier. Pointers on mastering Storm Overdrive.
That was the name he had settled on for the enhanced form of Wind Overdrive. The technique itself still needed refinement, but the direction was obvious enough now. It wasn’t just faster wind reinforcement or sharper edge flow. It had a different feel to it. More violent compression. More instability controlled into motion. Less like ordinary wind and more like the moment before weather turned murderous.
Storm Overdrive suited Luna disturbingly well.
She was already efficient, already light on wasted motion, already the sort of fighter who made clean killing look almost casual. Adding a technique built around sharper acceleration, harder burst changes, and deadlier angle pressure was an unpleasantly logical choice.
So Ludger had pointed her in that direction. Not everything, of course. He never handed out full answers unless someone had already proven they could survive earning them. But enough that Luna would know where to dig and how not to blow through the wrong wall first.
He himself had considered studying the enhanced variations of the other elements too. It was the natural next step.
If Wind Overdrive could deepen into Storm Overdrive, then the other elemental expressions likely had their own more advanced states as well. Fire, earth, water, perhaps even stranger branches depending on how far one pushed intent and compatibility. There was real value there, both in combat and in understanding how overdrive mechanics changed across different affinities.
And under normal circumstances, he might have focused on that immediately. But for now, he had decided to focus on something else. Because the capital had made one thing painfully clear. Power was not the only thing escalating. Structures were moving. Families were being purged. Hidden forces were becoming less hidden. And somewhere inside all that, threads were starting to pull tighter around the Empire itself.
Ludger knew himself well enough to admit the obvious. If he chased every interesting technique the moment it appeared, he would eventually end up stronger and strategically dumber. So for now, he let the elemental variations wait. There were other things he needed to prepare first.
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At the moment, Ludger stood alone on a hill with a bow in hand.
The wind brushed over the grass around his boots, cold enough to be annoying but not enough to matter. His eyes remained fixed on the target far ahead.
Two hundred and fifty meters away, a stone wall rose from the earth.
It was thick, simple, and ugly by design. No wasted details. No decoration. Just a dense slab of stone with a single target marked in the middle. More precisely, a hole. A round opening barely large enough for the arrow itself to pass through cleanly.
That was the whole point.
Ludger raised his free hand and used earth magic to shape another arrow.
The shaft formed first, dense and smooth. Then the head, heavy and narrow. Then the fletching, compressed from fine stone and treated with just enough care to keep the flight stable. It wasn’t a pretty arrow. It was a practical one. Heavy enough that mistakes showed immediately. Demanding enough that raw strength alone could not carry it through.
He nocked it. Drew. Aimed. Then fired.
The stone arrow crossed the distance with a sharp hiss and passed through the hole with barely a sound.
Ludger didn’t smile. He simply summoned the next one. Again. And again.
He had set a condition for himself. Unless the arrows passed through the hole ten times in a row without damaging the wall, he wouldn’t stop.
Not nine.
Not “close enough.”
Ten. Perfectly clean. Anything less meant the distance was still owning him. One hour later, he finally pulled it off.
Ten shots. Ten passes. No cracking around the edges. No chipped stone. No drift from fatigue at the end. Only then did Ludger lower the bow.
With a flick of his fingers, the stone wall collapsed back into the earth. Another one rose ten meters farther away.
Then he started again. Rinse and repeat. That had been his life for the last five days.
He shot. Adjusted. Failed. Restarted. Moved the wall farther. Repeated.
And aside from sleeping, he had barely stopped. The results were clearly showing.
His draw had become smoother, with less wasted tension in the shoulders and back. His grip no longer needed conscious correction every other shot. More importantly, his control over the arrow itself had improved in the way he actually cared about. Not flashy control. Not the crude sort where a mage simply forced the projectile through the air by spending extra mana.
Real control. The kind where the arrow was made correctly from the start. Balanced properly. Released with the right force. Guided by intent instead of compensated for by brute manipulation halfway through flight.
His earth magic was becoming more delicate because of it. Sharper. More disciplined. Even though he should have reached the limits of his geomancy a while ago.
And the bow itself was forcing him into a kind of patience he usually hated.
With fists, spears, walls, and explosions, mistakes could be corrected aggressively.
With this? A bad release was just a bad release. A slight shift in breathing became a miss hundreds of meters later. A tiny flaw in the shaft became drift. A moment of impatience became another hour wasted. So Ludger kept shooting.
The new wall stood at two hundred and sixty meters now. He summoned another heavy arrow, nocked it, and drew the bowstring back until the tension settled into his frame.
His gaze narrowed. Then the arrow flew.
Far ahead, it slipped through the hole cleanly enough that the wall didn’t even tremble. Ludger exhaled once through his nose. Nine more.
Hunter Lv 26 [+ 03 Dex + 03 Luk]
Skills: Power Shot Lv 30
Keen Eye Lv 25: Enhances visual focus and target tracking. Makes it easier to notice weak points, movement patterns, hidden enemies, and distant details. Especially useful for ranged combat and scouting.
Steady Hands Lv 20: Reduces minor shaking and improves weapon stability while aiming. Helps maintain accuracy under pressure, especially with bows, crossbows, or thrown weapons.
Mark Prey Lv 16: Temporarily locks focus onto a chosen target. Increases tracking efficiency and slightly improves accuracy against that enemy for a short time. The effect is stronger if the target is already wounded or fleeing.
Field Sense Lv 14: Gives the user a better instinct for terrain, cover, wind direction, and ambush points. Useful for hunting monsters, setting up attacks, and avoiding bad ground in a fight.
Quick Nock Lv 11: Improves the speed of reloading, drawing, or readying ranged attacks. The effect is small at first, but it becomes much more valuable in prolonged combat.
Ludger lowered the bow slightly and checked his progress.
The familiar screen appeared before him, clean and emotionless, listing the slow accumulation of effort in numbers and skill growth. His eyes passed over it without much reaction. There had been improvement. Enough to matter, not enough to satisfy him.
That was fine.
Satisfaction was usually just another way of slowing down. He dismissed the screen almost immediately and resumed training. Another wall rose farther ahead. Another heavy stone arrow formed in his hand.
Another draw. Another shot.
The last mission had forced something unpleasantly obvious into his face. At a high level, he could do a lot. More than a lot, honestly.
He could create chaos in the capital, tear through elite guards, survive mage barrages, and fight something that should have crushed dozens of experienced soldiers on its own. In pure capability, he had already stepped into territory where most people his age, or most people in general, had no business standing.
And yet the mission had still irritated him.
Not because he had been weak. Because he had been restricted. Having to hide some of his techniques had been really annoying. Using some others at low level was also troublesome.
That part lingered in his mind more than the bruises, more than the damage, more than the political mess afterward.
He couldn’t fight fully like himself. Couldn’t use certain motions too openly. Couldn’t rely too much on the habits and expressions that people close to him would recognize instantly.
Even some of his most natural transitions had become things he had to suppress or distort. That had cost him smoothness. Cost him comfort. Cost him efficiency in ways he deeply disliked.
Maybe he relied on those techniques too much. That was possible. It would be stupid not to at least consider it.
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