The reaction was immediate. Several of the foreign warriors took a step back.
They had seen what that blast had done.
Drarc had charged straight into it while fully armored, wrapped in that monstrous dragon-shaped shell of layered scale and dense mana, and even then he should have taken damage. Maybe not enough to drop him. Maybe not enough to stop him for long. But damage all the same.
The others would fare worse. Much worse. If even a fraction of that attack landed cleanly on the rest of them, they would not walk away in one piece. For the first time since the encirclement began, the circle around Ludger loosened by more than fear alone.
It loosened because they were recalculating. Ludger used that single sliver of hesitation at once.
His gaze snapped back toward Torvares. And the moment he saw the wound again, his mood sank even further. The flesh around the old lord’s neck had darkened more. Noticeably.
The color was spreading in ugly shades beneath the skin, like rot mixed with bruising and foreign mana corruption, chewing outward from the cut with patient cruelty. Even with Viola still pouring healing into him, the wound looked less like something being repaired and more like something being held together by force against its will.
Torvares was breathing.
Barely. His face had gone paler by the second, the lines of age on it harsher now beneath the lights and blood. Late sixties, Ludger thought. That mattered.
People liked pretending healing magic turned everyone into the same kind of patient, but it didn’t. Age mattered. Recovery mattered. The body’s willingness to fight mattered. The older the body, the less room there was for error, shock, blood loss, or corruption.
And time… time was exactly what they did not have.
The more seconds passed, the worse Torvares’ chances became.
Ludger’s thoughts moved fast. Too fast. He checked his options the way he always did when things became ugly enough that hesitation meant death.
First instinct:
Retreat underground.
He sent his senses downward at once, sweeping through the stone beneath the hall, the earth below the marble foundations, the routes he knew, the passages he had made, the hidden tunnels and emergency lines he had relied on during infiltration and movement around the capital.
What he found made his expression harden further.
Collapsed. Not random cave-ins. Not natural settling. The routes near the capital had been deliberately brought down. Choked with rubble and broken support points in ways too thorough to be accidental.
They had learned. And they had prepared that much. Of course they had.
Why leave a geomancer with access a way to escape after framing him for killing the Emperor? Ludger clicked his tongue inwardly. That path was gone. Or at least gone fast enough that using it now would take precious time and concentration he could not spare.
His eyes lifted again.
Around him, Luna had already adjusted her stance. Viola was still trying to hold Torvares together through sheer refusal. The foreign warriors were regrouping after the blast, not rushing in blindly now, but not retreating either. They were wary.
Which made them worse. Wary enemies coordinated better than arrogant ones. Ludger’s mind turned over the shape of the problem with brutal clarity. If he moved to heal Torvares himself, he would have to commit attention, mana, and at least a few seconds of stillness or limited movement.
That was exactly the kind of opening this group wanted. And if he gave them that opening, they would strike all at once. Not just at him. At Luna. At Viola. At Torvares. All at once. That was the real trap. Not merely to force Ludger into battle. To force him into a choice where any attempt to save one person might let the rest die together.
His jaw tightened. He hated those choices. Not because he couldn’t make them. Because he always ended up making them. His gaze flicked once more over the battlefield.
Ludger exhaled slowly through his nose.
He did not know, not yet, what exact move would save Torvares without opening the door for the others to be butchered at the same time. And that uncertainty, more than the enemy in front of him, was what truly enraged him.
Because the trap was working exactly as intended. They had not merely cornered him. They had built the situation so that every useful choice carried the risk of handing them everything at once.
Then, all of a sudden, Ludger had an idea.
A bad one. Or maybe an absurd one. Possibly both. He didn’t know if it would work.
Worse, he didn’t even know if the system would accept the logic the same way he did. But at this point, certainty was a luxury bleeding out on the floor together with Torvares.
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So he acted.
Mana flowed into the earth beneath his feet, and a strip of stone rose in a smooth arc into his hand. He shaped it quickly, compressing and refining it with practiced precision until it became a bracelet. Simple. Bearing the emblem of the Lionsguard across its surface.
It was crude compared to the real thing.
The true bracelets were made of froststeel, forged properly, meant to last and carry weight beyond symbolism. This one was earth, hastily made in the middle of a battlefield, rough around the edges and born of desperation more than ceremony.
But the material didn’t matter. Not right now. The intention did. Ludger finished the piece and tossed it toward Luna.
“Put that on his wrist.”
Luna caught it instinctively, then looked at him as if he had finally gone insane.
For a split second, that reaction was almost understandable.
Torvares was bleeding out from a rotting wound in the middle of a death trap, foreign assassins were tightening around them, and Ludger had decided this was the time to craft accessories.
Still, Luna did not waste time arguing. She obeyed. She dropped to Torvares’ side at once and secured the bracelet around his wrist just as Viola looked between them with confusion and rising desperation.
The next instant, the change happened. Subtle at first. Then undeniable.
Torvares’ body stopped looking quite so drained. Not fully. Not enough to call him safe. But the gray pallor that had been spreading across his face eased slightly, enough for it to be visible even under the blood and chaos. More importantly, the wound at his throat stopped rotting as quickly as before.
The darkening flesh no longer advanced with the same terrifying speed. It was working. Ludger felt the result immediately and let out a quiet breath through his nose.
Not a cure. Not even close. But enough. Enough to buy time. Enough to keep Torvares from slipping away in the next few breaths.
Enough because of one very specific thing… the bonuses granted by the Guildmaster class to those counted as members. Even damaged, even improvised, the symbol and intent had been enough for the system to recognize the connection.
For just a moment, Viola simply stared.
Then she looked from Torvares to the bracelet, then to Ludger with open disbelief.
“What...” she said. “How?”
Ludger didn’t answer. There was no time.
And even if there had been, explaining class benefits and system loopholes in the middle of an assassination would have been low on his list of priorities.
Instead, he moved his focus elsewhere and summoned. A flash of light burst beside him.
Silva emerged in full form at his side, the direwolf stepping into the ruined hall with immediate hostility already blazing in its eyes. Massive, heavy, and radiating predatory intent, Silva landed with a low growl that vibrated through the frozen stone. Its fur caught the ruined light in sharp silver-dark lines, and the beast’s glare fixed on the surrounding enemies as if it had been waiting for permission to tear into them from the start.
That only made the foreign warriors hesitate more. Their confusion deepened visibly. First the bracelet. Now a summoned direwolf appearing in the middle of the capital’s shattered throne hall. Several of them shifted their stances.
One actually glanced sideways, as if checking whether everyone else was seeing the same thing. Ludger welcomed their confusion.
The less they understood him, the better. Silva bared its teeth, lips curling back in a silent promise of violence, and lowered its body slightly as if ready to launch the moment Ludger gave it a target.
Ludger stood beside it, blood still on his arm and mouth, eyes colder than before.
Torvares wasn’t safe. But he wasn’t dead yet. And that was enough for the next part.
Luna looked at Silva, then at Ludger, her expression tightening further.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “You shouldn’t have summoned your direwolf. If the Empire is attacking Lionfang, they’ll need all the help they can get.”
Her voice was calm on the surface, but Ludger could hear the strain under it. She was already thinking ahead. Already connecting the capital trap to everything else Drarc had implied. If the Empire’s real forces had been “used for something else,” then Lionfang was an obvious target.
Which meant every asset mattered. Including Silva. Ludger didn’t waste time pretending otherwise.
“We need to get Torvares to Aronia,” he said. “Fast. She should be able to heal him properly. Silva will help carry him faster.”
Luna’s eyes flickered once.
Aronia. Yes. If anyone outside Ludger himself had a real chance of dealing with a wound like that, it would be her. More importantly, she might understand how to purge whatever was actively rotting Torvares from the inside.
Ludger continued, his voice low and absolute.
“Even if the whole Empire tries to fight the Lionsguard, they won’t fall that easily.”
That wasn’t bravado. Just truth. Lionfang was not the same weak border settlement it had once been. The walls were stronger. The guild was stronger. The people were harder. And beyond that…
“We have the northerners too,” Ludger said.
That mattered.
The alliance was real now, not some fragile arrangement to be broken by the first political storm. If the capital thought it could simply aim the Empire’s weight at Lionfang and crush it cleanly, then it was about to learn how ugly frontier wars became when people actually knew how to survive them.
Ludger looked directly at Luna.
“I’ll handle these bastards first,” he said. “Then I’ll follow.”
Luna opened her mouth.
“But—”
Ludger cut her off immediately.
“Protect my family no matter what, Luna.”
His voice did not rise. It didn’t need to.
“I’m counting on you.”
That stopped her. For one brief second, Luna just stared at him. Because there were things he could have said there. Orders about Torvares. Orders about Viola. Orders about escape routes, battlefield priorities, regrouping plans.
Instead, he had said that. Protect my family. Not the guild. Not the mission. His family. Luna’s lips parted slightly, but no words came out.
There was nothing to say.
Not when Viola was still kneeling beside her grandfather, shaking, fighting with everything she had not to collapse into despair while healing mana kept pouring from her trembling hands. Not when Torvares’ life hung by threads. Not when the hall around them was full of killers. Not when Ludger had already chosen the role he was going to play next.
So Luna simply tightened her grip. On the bracelet. On the situation. On herself.Then, before the enemies could fully understand what he was preparing, earth rose around them.
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