Callen looked briefly betrayed by reality itself. Rhea laughed.
Mira sighed once but there was no real resistance in it. Derrin already looked like he was mentally reviewing names. Taron, dangerously enough, looked energized.
Ludger watched all five of them and spoke one last time before the room could dissolve into side arguments.
“You wanted to stop being bored moving goods to the Velis League,” he said. “Congratulations. You now have something harder.”
Rhea’s grin turned sharp. “Good.”
Derrin muttered, “I liked being bored.”
“You’re lying,” Mira said.
“A little.”
Ludger ignored them and rose from his seat.
“You’ll remain a team,” he said again, more firmly this time. “That matters. When special missions come, I want the five of you able to work together without wasting time pretending you need to learn each other again.”
His gaze sharpened.
“But from now on, I want you building something that can stand without the others too.”
That was the true heart of it. Not just five promising recruits. Five growing centers of capability. Five future influences inside Lionsguard. Five squads with identities strong enough to sharpen the whole guild. And judging from the way the room had changed, they understood that now.
Even Rhea. Which, honestly, was a little worrying.
Ludger did not stop with those five.
Once that meeting ended, he called in other veterans of the guild as well and gave them much the same message, though adjusted for who they were, what they had proven, and how much responsibility he trusted them not to fumble immediately.
The core of it stayed the same.
Lionsguard had grown too large to keep pretending that talent would sort itself out naturally. Veterans who had spent enough time surviving, teaching, escorting, fighting, and adapting were no longer just useful hands. They were becoming structural pieces whether they liked it or not.
So Ludger made it official. They would choose from among the newer members of the guild. They would take them under their wings.
Not as pampered protégés, and not as random bodies handed over for punishment disguised as training, but as squad members, apprentices, specialists in development, or simply younger fighters who needed the right pressure in the right shape if they were going to become worth anything.
Some veterans accepted the idea faster than others.
A few understood immediately and started planning before Ludger had even finished speaking. Others took longer, mostly because being told you now help shape the next generation of the guild sounded suspiciously like more work, which in fairness it absolutely was. A handful looked proud, which Ludger found mildly irritating but not yet dangerous enough to correct unless it grew into stupidity.
Still, the process moved forward. And over the next weeks, the teams began to form. Slowly at first. Then all at once.
That was how things usually worked in organizations trying to become something larger than a lucky collection of capable people. The early stage looked messy, papers, names, uncertain pairings, bad first impressions, obvious mismatches, arguments over role fit, veterans realizing some recruits were much more annoying up close than they had seemed at a distance.
Then the shape started emerging. A spear-heavy team with stronger line control and disciplined pressure. A scout-oriented unit built around movement, observation, hunting, and survival. A support-and-utility team that used alchemy, runes, preparation, and battlefield stabilization. Brutal close-range squads that hit hard enough to solve problems before the problems understood what was happening.
Mixed teams for routes, escort, frontier response, and difficult terrain operations.
Lionfang’s training yards began to look different because of it. Less like one large guild trying to force everyone through the same rough mold. More like a place where multiple developing identities were beginning to sharpen at once.
And once those teams had enough shape to stop embarrassing themselves publicly, Ludger pushed them outward.
They started taking jobs. Not random ones. Jobs chosen with purpose.
Assignments that gave them the chance to improve in the fields they wanted to build around. Escort teams took harder escort routes. Scout squads handled tracking and terrain-heavy work. Utility-heavy groups were sent where logistics, support, alchemy, or rune application actually mattered. Close-combat units got the sort of contracts where direct force had value beyond swinging loudly until something died.
They learned. Quickly, in some cases. Painfully, in others.
A few returned proud. A few returned irritated. Most returned having discovered that building a squad identity in theory was easier than doing it in mud, blood, bad weather, and bad communication.
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Which was good. That was the point. Around that same time, another change began spreading through the guild. The mission uniforms.
Those started being distributed for assignments away from home, and their arrival caused exactly the kind of mixed reaction Ludger expected the moment he saw them.
They were… Flashy. Unnecessarily so, in his opinion. The colors, for reasons no sane person had apparently managed to stop in time, were a mix of red and green. Not subtle red and green, either. Not the sort of muted frontier palette that tried to blend practicality with identity.
A very deliberate combination that somehow managed to look both organized and mildly aggressive even before anyone wearing it started moving.
When Ludger asked why in the world those had been chosen, Julia answered with the confidence of someone who had already decided the matter was obvious.
“It seemed like the best combination,” she said, “given the creator of the guild and its name.”
That answer did not help. Not at all.
Ludger stared at her for a second. “That explains nothing.”
Julia looked offended by the accusation.
“Lionsguard,” she said, as if speaking to someone unusually slow. “Green from you and growth. Red for strength, blood, and the lion imagery. Also they stand out. A bit of Torvares as well with their red bull.”
“Yes,” Ludger said dryly. “That is part of the problem.”
Julia, naturally, ignored that. Whatever his feelings about the colors, the uniforms themselves were well designed. That part mattered more.
They were simple in structure, practical in cut, and made with enough variation to avoid turning guild members into idiots dressed as decorations. There were lighter versions for travel and warmer conditions, heavier layered versions for cold, reinforced outer options for rough terrain and harsher contracts, and adapted forms for rain, wind, and extended route work.
Scouts and hunters had slightly easier movement in the legs and shoulders. Frontline fighters had sturdier builds and room for armor integration. Support types and casters had versions that prioritized carry space, access, and flexibility instead of pretending everyone needed the same arrangement.
There were cloaks, lighter overcoats, weather-resistant outerwear, and mission-ready combinations that could be changed based on terrain without losing the core visual identity of the guild.
That was the important part. The uniforms were not restrictive. Not really.
They looked coordinated without crippling function, which already made them better than half the polished nonsense noble houses liked dressing their people in when they wanted discipline to look more important than mobility.
Ludger still thought the colors were irritating.
But functionally? They worked. And once enough members started wearing them out on contracts, the effect was immediate. Lionsguard stopped looking like a gathering of frontier fighters, recruits, northerners, hired hands, and growing specialists who happened to work under the same banner.
They started looking like a guild. A real one. Recognizable at distance. Structured enough to be remembered. Distinct enough that people could no longer mistake them for just another armed group from the north.
That carried its own benefits. And its own risks. Visibility invited reputation. Reputation invited expectations. Expectations invited attention from people Ludger would generally have preferred to keep confused for a little longer.
Still, there was no avoiding that forever. Lionsguard had already become too large to remain half-hidden in impression and identity.
So the teams formed. The veterans took newcomers under their wings. The contracts sharpened them.
And with red-and-green uniforms spreading across route work, frontier jobs, escort runs, and harder missions beyond Lionfang, the guild began to look more and more like what it was becoming… not just a dangerous faction growing at the edge of the Empire, but an organized force building a future of its own.
While Ludger was busy writing a set of manuals on earth creation and manipulation for the archer squads, mostly so they would stop needing to haul a ridiculous amount of ammunition everywhere like pack mules with anger issues, someone knocked on his door.
Just enough to interrupt the line of thought he had been following about projectile density, shaped ammunition consistency, and how much fine control an average archer could reasonably be trusted with before the whole idea became a safety problem.
Ludger sighed faintly, then spun in his chair. The chair itself was still a prototype.
He had been experimenting with it on and off between actual responsibilities, which probably said something unflattering about his priorities, but he didn’t care. The thing could turn smoothly, had a better backrest than most furniture in this world deserved, and rolled just enough to be useful without becoming annoying.
Honestly, it looked suspiciously like a gaming chair. Not that there were gamers in this world. Unless gambling counted.
Which, now that he thought about it, probably meant there were, just in a much more disappointing form.
Regardless, he turned toward the door and said, “What is it?”
Yvar stepped in.
The moment Ludger saw his face, he could tell this was not a routine update about supplies, route adjustments, or somebody miscounting wool shipments again. Yvar looked alert in the wrong way. Focused, yes, but with the kind of tightness around the mouth that suggested something important had just landed on his desk and he had come here immediately instead of trying to sort it out first.
He even gulped once before speaking.
That alone was enough to make Ludger stop spinning.
“The Regent sent the payment,” Yvar said.
Ludger’s expression didn’t change much, but his full attention sharpened.
“For the hunt,” Yvar added. “For tracking and eliminating the fugitives.”
So. That meant they had confirmed it.
Or at least accepted it strongly enough that they were willing to act as though Ludger had completed the assignment exactly as ordered. The Dalmoren line, Gustav, the escape, the mountain, the smoke trail, whatever doubts still existed behind closed doors, the capital had apparently chosen the useful version of reality.
Good. That was preferable.
Ludger gave a small nod. “How much?”
Yvar blinked once, as if the sheer practicality of that question after everything else had caught him slightly off guard.
Then he answered.
“A box full of diamond coins.”
Ludger’s brows lowered by the slightest amount.
That was… not bad. Actually, no. That was very good.
More than good, depending on the size of the box and whether the Regent had decided to be generous out of satisfaction, caution, or some private calculation meant to make future cooperation seem more attractive than it should.
Not that Ludger trusted any of those motives equally. Still, diamond coins were diamond coins. But Yvar hadn’t finished.
“And that wasn’t all,” he said.
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Yvar took one breath, then continued.
“They also sent you an invitation. To the Emperor’s birthday celebration.”
That got more reaction than the money.
Only a little. But still more.
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