All Jobs and Classes! I Just Wanted One Skill, Not Them All!

Ludger’s expression did not change. But inside, the irritation only settled deeper.

Yes.

That was exactly how this would go.

A half-buried trail. Old crimes. dead witnesses. loyal officials. frightened nobles. and one clean-faced bastard at court calmly dismissing every accusation as grief, rumor, or manipulation.

He hated how useful that thought was. For a while, no one spoke.

Then Gustav lifted his head slightly and said, “I do have a plan.”

That drew everyone’s attention at once. Jennifer frowned.

Rufas looked tired rather than hopeful, which was probably the wiser response. Eclaire’s eyes narrowed immediately. Rowan stayed still, but his focus shifted in the subtle way it always did when something stopped being a confession and started becoming a proposal.

Ludger looked at Gustav without any visible interest.

“Do you.”

Gustav nodded once.

“Yes.”

His eyes were dull with exhaustion, but there was still thought behind them. Still calculation. Still the remains of a man who had survived too long in rotten structures by learning how to think three moves ahead whenever possible.

“If you want time,” Gustav said, “to do whatever it is you’re planning… then you should do exactly what I say next.”

That line could have gone badly. Very badly. Several people in the camp visibly stiffened, probably realizing a little too late how absurd it sounded for Gustav to phrase anything like an instruction to Ludger in his current position.

But Gustav kept speaking before that reaction could turn into interruption.

“If you don’t,” he said, “then none of our goals will be achieved.”

That made Ludger’s eyes narrow by a degree.

Our goals.

Interesting choice of words. Risky too. Jennifer almost said something. Eclaire beat her to it.

“What goals?” she asked, voice sharp.

Gustav looked at her briefly, then back to Ludger.

“You want time, information, and room to move before the Empire closes its fist around everyone involved,” he said. “Rufas wants his family to survive. The people here want not to be dragged back and buried in the dark. And whether you like hearing it or not…” His mouth tightened faintly. “I want Orleandul and Armandis to lose.”

That hung in the air. Not because it was persuasive. Because it was ugly enough to sound true. Ludger remained completely still. Gustav went on.

“If you kill me now, or if you drag this out without changing the shape of the hunt, the search tightens. More people get involved. More guilds. More scouts. More pressure from the capital. Every day that passes without a clear ending gives the wrong people more time to arrange the right lies.” He exhaled quietly. “And once that happens, they recover control.”

Rufas’s expression hardened. Because yes. That part was obvious. The Dalmorens had hidden well, but not forever. The longer this dragged on, the smaller their chances became. Gustav looked at Ludger with the careful steadiness of a man trying very hard not to overplay the only remaining leverage he had.

“You need the hunt to end,” he said. “Or at least appear to end.”

That got Ludger’s full attention. Not outwardly. But enough. The floating swords continued their slow orbit around him, silent and cold, while the camp held its breath around the center.

Finally, Ludger spoke.

“Then talk carefully,” he said. “Because if your plan wastes my time, I’ll stop needing you.”

Gustav gave a faint nod. He believed that too. And that, more than anything else, was why he chose his next words with all the care he had left.

The next day, the search groups woke to an explosion so violent that the entire area shook.

It hit without warning.

One second there had only been the cold morning air, half-packed camps, tired men chewing through stale rations, and the usual low muttering of armed people pretending they weren’t irritated to be awake this early.

The next… The world slammed.

A thunderous blast tore across the countryside with enough force to rattle armor, shake tents loose, and throw birds screaming out of distant trees. The ground trembled underfoot like something enormous had punched the earth itself. Men stumbled. Horses shrieked and reared. One campfire collapsed sideways as sparks burst into the air.

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For several long seconds, nobody understood what had happened. Then someone shouted. And everyone turned.

In the distance, beyond the low rises and rough stretches of grassland they had been combing through since the previous day, a dark column began to climb into the sky.

Smoke. Thick. Heavy. And rising fast. Not the kind made by a small campfire, a wagon blaze, or a careless alchemist.

This was bigger. Far bigger. It rolled upward in a dense curtain, dark enough to stain the pale morning light around it, while the last echoes of the explosion kept rumbling over the land like the delayed growl of a god in a bad mood.

Search groups started moving almost immediately.

Some shouted for formation. Others grabbed weapons first and asked questions later. A few of the more experienced men hesitated only long enough to confirm direction before breaking into a run. Even rival groups that had been eyeing one another suspiciously since dawn forgot their smaller tensions for the moment.

Because whatever had caused a blast like that was not something anyone nearby could afford to ignore. They advanced quickly across the terrain, boots hammering the ground while the smoke kept rising higher and higher ahead of them.

The closer they got, the stranger it felt. The air changed first. It grew hotter. Not naturally hot. Not the ordinary warmth of early sunlight spreading over open land. Residual heat. Dry, unnatural, and lingering. Then came the smell. Burned earth. Scorched stone.

A sharp, ugly scent like the land itself had been cooked too hard and too fast.

By the time the first searchers crested the last broad rise, they slowed almost instinctively. Then they stopped. Eyes widened. Because what lay ahead did not look like the aftermath of an ordinary attack. A massive crater had been blasted into the earth.

The impact zone was wide enough that several men standing shoulder to shoulder could have fit across part of its center without taking up even half the distance. The ground around it had been torn open violently, with dirt, shattered stone, and fragments of half-melted terrain thrown in all directions. Blackened lines spread outward from the center like cracks left behind by some impossible force pressing downward from above.

And the rocks… The rocks were melted. Not broken. Not merely blasted apart. Melted.

Large sections of stone around the crater had warped and slumped into grotesque shapes, as though exposed to heat so extreme that the ground itself had briefly forgotten how to remain solid. Some of the surfaces had cooled into glossy, ugly curves that reflected the morning light in strange dull flashes. Others still steamed faintly.

One man stared for a long second before muttering, “What in the hells…”

No one answered him. Because no one had a good answer. The sight was too wrong. Too large. Too sudden. It almost looked like a meteor had fallen from the sky and decimated whatever had been there.

That was the first thought several of them had. A falling star. Some lunatic mage’s final attack.

Whatever it was, it had not left behind anything simple.

The searchers spread carefully around the outer edge, some shielding their faces from the heat still rolling up from the crater while others peered down into the torn center with visible unease.

If there had been a camp there before, it was gone.

If there had been people there before, they had been erased so thoroughly that the land itself seemed unwilling to say what had stood in that place only hours earlier.

Smoke still climbed into the sky. The crater still radiated heat.

And standing around the edge of it, with the morning wind dragging the scent of scorched ruin across their armor and cloaks, the search groups could only stare at the devastation and wonder what kind of monster, or what kind of man, had done it.

They had barely begun to process the first crater when another explosion tore across the land.

This one came from several kilometers away.

The sound rolled over the hills like a second judgment, deeper and harsher now that everyone was already listening for disaster. The ground shook again beneath their boots, and more heads snapped toward the distant horizon just in time to see another thick curtain of smoke rising into the sky.

For a few seconds, no one moved. They just stared. Then they looked at each other. Confusion. Suspicion. Unease.

Because one impossible blast could be called many things. A hidden trap. A forbidden spell. A desperate last resort.

Two was different. Two meant a pattern. And patterns like that were rarely good.

“What are we even chasing?” one man muttered.

No one had a satisfying answer.

The scale of the destruction felt wrong for human fugitives. Wrong for a retreating noble family. Wrong for almost anything short of a true monster. The sort of thing people only spoke about in lowered voices after too much drink or after surviving a labyrinth they should never have entered in the first place.

More than one of them had the same thought. It felt like a labyrinth guardian had escaped. Not just escaped either. Escaped and decided the Empire itself looked like something worth destroying. That idea was ridiculous. It was also close enough to the feeling of the situation that no one laughed.

With obvious hesitation, the search groups began moving again toward the site of the second explosion. Not eagerly. Not bravely. Just because standing still while the countryside kept erupting around them seemed even dumber than running toward it.

So they ran.

Across torn grassland and stony rises, through the lingering heat and drifting ash of the morning, chasing another column of smoke into the distance. When they reached the second point, the same thing had happened.

Another crater. Another section of ruined earth.

Another stretch of shattered and melted stone, as if the sky itself had briefly fallen down and then ripped itself away again before anyone could understand what they were seeing.

There were tracks too. Not clear ones. But enough disruption around the edges to suggest movement. Flight. Chaos. Something large striking or something devastating passing through. No one could read it cleanly because the explosions kept ruining whatever might have been useful.

Then, before they could settle on a direction, a third explosion thundered from even farther ahead. Someone cursed. Someone else openly considered turning back. But no one wanted to be the first to admit that whatever was happening was bigger than the sort of hunt they had signed up for.

So they kept moving. And the same thing happened again. And again.

Throughout the day, the pattern repeated itself like some insane trail of destruction dragged across the countryside by a force that neither needed nor respected roads. Each time the search groups got close enough to think they might finally understand the shape of the thing ahead of them, another blast would erupt farther on. Another smoke curtain would rise. Another piece of earth would be torn open and left ruined behind it.

It was maddening.

Exhausting too.

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