Chapter 720
A week passed.
Lionfang settled back into its stubborn rhythm, and Ludger did what he always did when the world tried to pile problems on his head—he started cutting them down one by one until the pile stopped moving.
Most of what he’d left behind hadn’t been catastrophic.
Just… the kind of messy, layered issues that grew teeth if you ignored them.
Supply disputes. Patrol schedules that drifted. A few merchants testing the rebuilt routes. Quiet rumors that needed to be smothered before they became loud ones. Small tensions between locals and northerners that needed a firm hand and the right words before they turned into stupid violence.
His dad could handle a lot. Yvar could handle paperwork as well with paperwork.
But some problems didn’t respond to paperwork or soft pressure. Some needed Ludger’s particular mix of blunt authority and “I will personally ruin you” presence. So he did it.
He worked through the week like a machine, morning briefings, midday checks, night reviews, fixing what Arslan and Yvar couldn’t solve without stepping on political landmines. He delegated where he could, forced solutions where he had to, and made sure the guild’s spine stayed straight.
And when the important fires were mostly out, he did the other necessary thing. He sent a letter to Rufas. Not a dramatic report. Not a heroic story.
Just the facts: the sea beast engagement ended in a draw, the crew survived, the ship was repaired enough to return, deeper complications found, and the “elimination” portion of the contract… only half completed.
Ludger didn’t polish it. He didn’t beg. He didn’t promise impossible outcomes. He sent it because it was required. Then he waited. And waited. No answer yet.
That should’ve been reassuring, bureaucrats were slow, and people like Rufas usually took their time to decide how to spin bad news into something useful.
But the silence still sat wrong in Ludger’s gut. Because when powerful people didn’t respond, it rarely meant they’d forgotten. It meant they were thinking. And Ludger found himself wondering, more and more often as the days passed, what exactly he should expect when Rufas finally decided to speak.
For once, Ludger had free time.
Not “nothing to do,” because that didn’t exist, but the rare gap where nothing was actively on fire and no one was pounding on his door with a crisis that required immediate violence.
So he used it the way he always did. He went looking for answers.
Raukor’s workspace sat where it always had, quiet, half-hidden, the kind of place that smelled like metal, oil, and old mana. Ludger knocked once and stepped in without waiting for permission.
Raukor looked up. And the expression on his face was… familiar.
It was the same expression he’d worn the first time Ludger had dropped those colorful marbles on his table: eyes widening just slightly, pupils tightening, jaw going still as if the world had just offered him a puzzle that was rude enough to be interesting. For a big beastman who usually looked like stone given flesh, that tiny change read like shock. Ludger raised an eyebrow.
“Nice to see you too,” he said dryly.
Raukor didn’t respond to the sarcasm. He was already staring at Ludger like he was trying to decide whether Ludger had brought more problems or more treasures. Ludger cut to it.
“Anything?” he asked.
Raukor didn’t answer right away, of course he didn’t.
He turned back to his table, lifted a small tray, and set it down in front of Ludger with deliberate care. Inside were a handful of the marbles Ludger had entrusted to him, smooth and glossy, each one a different color, each one faintly glowing like it was holding a piece of sunset under glass.
They looked harmless. They weren’t. Raukor stared at them for several long seconds, then finally spoke in that slow, measured way of his, as if words were expensive and he didn’t like wasting them.
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“These marbles…” he began.
He paused again.
Ludger didn’t rush him. Raukor moved at his own speed, and forcing him only made him slower out of spite. Raukor continued, voice low.
“They are almost alive.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed. “Almost.”
Raukor nodded once, then picked up one marble between clawed fingers. The glow reflected off his nails.
“I can tell the color and the shine come from mana,” he said. “That part is obvious.”
He rolled it slowly, watching the light shift inside.
“But there is something else,” Raukor added, and for the first time his tone carried a hint of uncertainty, like he didn’t like admitting he couldn’t fully name what he was sensing.
“Something that is not just mana.”
He held the marble closer to his face, nostrils flaring as if he could smell the difference.
“It reacts,” Raukor said. “Not like an enchantment. Not like an energy sourge.”
He set it down and tapped it lightly with one claw.
“It reacts like…” he searched for the word, expression tightening, “…a seed.”
Ludger went still. A seed meant growth. A seed meant intent. And if these things were seeds, then the question wasn’t just what they were worth. It was what they were meant to become.
Raukor turned the tray slightly, letting the marbles roll a fraction and settle again. The soft clinks against metal sounded wrong in the quiet, too delicate for something that carried that much weight.
“I can try to use them,” Raukor said, voice slow and careful. “On weapons. Inlays. Core sockets.”
He gestured toward a half-finished blade nearby, its runic grooves still raw.
“The mana in them is dense. Stable enough that I could anchor an enchantment without draining a mage dry. A spearhead that bites deeper. A sword that holds an edge against resistant flesh. Armor that turns a strike aside.”
He paused, claws hovering over the marbles without touching them.
“But…”
The word came out heavier than it should have.
Raukor’s expression tightened, brow furrowing in a way that made his face look older, more wary.
“I almost feel like I shouldn’t,” he admitted. “Because of their nature.”
Ludger didn’t speak. Raukor continued anyway, as if explaining it out loud might help him tolerate the thought.
“These are not like crystals mined from a mountain,” Raukor said. “Not like beast cores. Not like refined mana stones.”
He picked one up again, and his eyes narrowed as if he could feel the thing watching him back.
“When I hold them, I feel resistance,” he said. “Not physical. Not magical in the usual way. Something… quiet. Like a presence that does not want to be broken apart for convenience.”
His thumb rolled the marble, and the glow inside it shifted, subtle, like a pupil contracting.
“If I force it into a weapon,” Raukor murmured, “it will work.”
He looked at Ludger then, eyes serious.
“But I will be doing something that feels… wrong.”
Ludger stayed silent, but his jaw tightened.
Because the moment Raukor said it, Ludger’s mind slid back to the island. The other side. The routes between worlds. The guardian chewing a snake-person’s tail like jerky. Capsules that rewrote flesh. Purple spears formed from venom like an ability stolen and replicated.
He’d seen enough in the last week to stop assuming resources were “found.”
A lot of them were taken. And the marbles… They fit too neatly into that pattern. He looked down at the tray. Smooth. Pretty. Convenient. And suddenly the word “seed” didn’t feel poetic. It felt like warning.
Ludger had a nasty suspicion those marbles once belonged to living beings. Not metaphorically. Literally. As part of them. Or, worse, parts of them extracted and processed into something portable, tradable, usable.
He didn’t like either thought. He didn’t like the idea of carrying around someone’s pieces like currency. And he didn’t like what it implied about the kind of people who’d make them. So he understood what Raukor meant. Not because Ludger was sentimental.
Because he’d learned, very recently, that anything “almost alive” had a habit of coming back to collect debts. Ludger stared at the glowing spheres for a long moment. Then he spoke, voice low and flat.
“Don’t put them in weapons yet,” he said.
Raukor’s shoulders loosened slightly, as if he’d been waiting for permission to follow his instincts.
Ludger kept his gaze on the tray.
“Figure out what they are first,” he added. “Then we decide what we’re willing to become.”
Ludger kept his eyes on the tray, on the way the light inside the marbles pulsed faintly like it was breathing in its sleep.
“I might figure that out first,” he said. “And then we’ll have our answer.”
He didn’t lift his voice. He didn’t dramatize it.
He just stated it like a plan, because that was how Ludger handled things that made his skin crawl. You didn’t panic. You didn’t indulge the feeling.
You investigated.
“This belonged to the Empire before,” Ludger added, gaze hardening. “Or at least it passed through their hands.”
He tapped one marble lightly with a finger, then pulled back as if even that contact was more than he wanted.
“If they realize we have them, it’ll be troublesome,” he said. “Troublesome in the way that gets people killed.”
Raukor’s ears flicked slightly, the beastman version of agreement. He nodded once, slow, satisfied. Not because he enjoyed trouble. Because Ludger had just taken pressure off him.
Because Ludger hadn’t said, Do it anyway. Make me stronger. We’ll deal with consequences later.
He’d said the opposite. He’d chosen caution over immediate power. Raukor set the tray farther back on the table, like putting a lid on a dangerous pot.
“Good,” he rumbled quietly. “You will not force it.”
Ludger’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“No,” he said. “I’m not that desperate.”
Raukor’s gaze stayed on the marbles for a moment longer, then returned to Ludger. It wasn’t praise. But it was approval, heavy an
d honest.
Satisfied that Ludger wouldn’t make him cross a line just to gain power.