Chapter 724
Ludger was halfway buried in his own work when the knock came.
Not loud. Not urgent. The careful kind of knock that meant whoever was outside already knew he was awake, and also knew better than to barge in.
He paused mid-stroke, stylus hovering over a page filled with tight runic lines and annotated arrows. Ink glistened in the lamplight. A dozen sheets were spread across the bed, the desk, even the floor, organized chaos only he could navigate. Bottles of ink stood in little clusters like an army waiting for orders.
“Ludger?” his mother’s voice came through the door. “Can I come in?”
He set the pen down and pinched the bridge of his nose once, more to reset his mind than out of annoyance.
“Yes.”
The door opened, and Elaine stepped in.
She didn’t immediately speak. She did what she always did when she entered a room: she looked. A slow sweep with sharp eyes, taking inventory like she was checking for threats and messes in the same breath.
She cleaned his room often, too often, in his opinion, but even she had her limits.
It was filled with paper.
Not some paper. Paper everywhere. Stacks. Loose sheets. Folded pages with wax-sealed corners. A half-bound notebook with a thread still hanging from the spine. Ink bottles in different sizes. A jar of charcoal. A small bowl of something that smelled sweet, like honey mixed with herbs, sitting near the window where the air stayed cool.
The scent floated through the room, warm, faintly floral, and just unfamiliar enough to make it distracting. Elaine’s brow lifted a fraction.
“What is all this?” she asked softly, not accusing, just… curious.
Ludger tried to turn toward her with a practiced pivot, one smooth motion to face the door… and got betrayed by reality. His chair didn’t spin. Because it was a wooden chair. A normal chair.
He shifted, scooted, and turned manually with a quiet scrape that felt like humiliation.
For half a second, his mind flashed an image of a proper spinning chair, something with a central pivot and bearings, maybe carved wood, maybe metal fittings, stable base, adjustable height…
I should make those in this world.
He filed the thought away like a weapon idea and finally faced her.
“What is it, Mom?” he asked, voice neutral.
Elaine stepped farther in, careful not to step on any pages. She glanced down at the runes, at the annotations, at the messy precision of it all. Her expression softened in that way it only did around him, pride and worry welded together.
Then she looked up.
“You turned fourteen while you were on that mission,” she said.
Ludger blinked once. He already knew that, technically, but it had been filed under irrelevant during survival.
Elaine continued, “And we didn’t… do anything properly. Not really.”
She hesitated, then her mouth curved with a small, determined smile.
“So,” she said, “I was thinking… for your fifteenth birthday, we should plan something big.”
There it was. Ludger’s eyebrows drew together a fraction before he could stop them. He didn’t care about birthday parties. Not in the way other people did. The number changing didn’t make him stronger. It didn’t fix routes or stabilize politics or keep recruits from dying because they got cocky.
And a fifteenth birthday?
He wasn’t a girl. He wasn’t some noble’s daughter waiting for a coming-of-age gala. And even if the body was fourteen going on fifteen, his mind… his mind was older. Too old to pretend he wanted cake and cheering.
Elaine studied him carefully, like she was reading a report written in his posture.
“Would you mind?” she asked.
Ludger opened his mouth. Stopped. He could say no. Clean. Simple. Efficient. But the thought landed in his chest with more weight than it deserved:
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If I say no, will she look disappointed? Will she get sad?
It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t tactical. It was… human.
And his mother had been through enough. Everyone had. The way she’d looked when he came back from the sea, like she’d been holding her breath for a week and only just remembered how to breathe, didn’t leave his mind easily.
Ludger stared at her for a beat, frown still faintly etched into his face. He didn’t want a party. But he also didn’t want to hurt her.
“…I don’t care about birthdays,” he said slowly, choosing the words like he was disarming a trap. “But…”
He hesitated, and it was rare enough that Elaine’s eyes narrowed with attention.
“…If you want to do something,” Ludger finished, voice quieter, “I won’t stop you.”
Elaine’s expression brightened, not dramatically, but enough to make the room feel warmer.
“Good,” she said, like she’d just won a battle she didn’t want him to notice. “Then I’m doing it.”
Ludger exhaled through his nose. Of course she was. Ludger let out a slow sigh the moment the door clicked shut behind her. Eleven months.
If Elaine was bringing this up now, it meant she wasn’t thinking “cake and a quiet dinner.”
She was thinking event.
He stared at the ink bottles and scattered pages like they might offer a solution to the problem of having a mother with a will stronger than stone.
He wanted nothing. Or, if “nothing” wasn’t possible in this household, then something small. A meal. A few people. No speeches. No crowd. No banners. No strangers deciding they were entitled to touch him because it was “his day.”
But Elaine had that look.
The one that said I lost you once and I’m not letting the world steal this from me too.
He couldn’t stop her when she was that determined. And… honestly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Ludger pushed the thought away before it grew teeth and turned back to his desk.
Work was easier. Work made sense. Right now, the problem was ink.
He’d been trying to make the magic water cooperate, Aquamancer-produced water, dense with his mana imprint, controlled in a way normal water simply wasn’t. He’d expected something. A reaction. A resonance. A change in how the ink held runic intent.
Something. Instead, he had a jar of slightly darker ink that smelled faintly different, and a page full of runes that looked exactly like yesterday’s failures.
He dipped the pen again, traced a test pattern, and watched the lines dry. Nothing. No tightening of mana flow. No “grip” in the paper. No hint of a stored imprint waiting to trigger.
Just ink. Just paper. Just stubborn reality. Ludger’s brow furrowed. He held his fingers above the page and pushed a thin thread of mana into the pattern, trying to see if it would catch on the ink like it did on etched stone or carved runewood.
The mana slid across it like oil on glass. Refused to anchor. He clicked his tongue softly, annoyed.
“Just mixing it isn’t doing anything,” he muttered.
The answer felt obvious and irritating at the same time. This wasn’t like adding salt to stew.
If he wanted ink that held mana, ink that could act like a rune-carving medium, then the water couldn’t be an afterthought. It couldn’t be poured in at the end like a clever shortcut.
It had to be part of the base. Produced from scratch.
The pigment suspended in his water. The binding agent dissolved in his water. The whole thing made under mana control from the first step so the structure formed around the imprint instead of resisting it.
Ludger leaned back, chair legs creaking, and stared at the ceiling for a second. More steps. More work. More time. But time was exactly what he was trying to buy. He leaned forward again, eyes hardening, and pulled a fresh sheet toward him. If the world wouldn’t give him a shortcut, fine. He’d build the long road and pave it with results.
He uncorked a new bottle, poured the old ink aside, and began writing a new checklist, ingredients, ratios, temperatures, the exact point he would introduce mana, the point he would introduce Aquamancer water, the point he would let it rest, the point he would test it against paper treated three different ways.
Methodical. Relentless.
Outside, Lionfang kept breathing, kids shouting, smiths hammering, Northerners muttering letters like spells. Inside, Ludger returned to work.
Because if his mother wanted eleven months to plan a celebration…
He had eleven months to build something that could make the Empire regret ever assuming “sealed labyrinths” meant safety.
The next morning, Ludger returned to the guild with ink still clinging faintly to his fingers and a restless edge in his step.
The compound was already awake. Voices echoed through stone corridors. Boots scuffed. Someone was arguing about cargo weights like it was a moral issue.
When Ludger stepped into the lobby, he found Yvar standing near the front desk, accepting a sealed letter from a courier who looked far too pleased with himself. The wax seal caught the light. A clean stamp. Sharp edges.
Dalmoren.
Yvar didn’t break it yet. He held it like it had weight beyond paper, because it did. Noble seals always did. His eyes flicked up as Ludger approached. Ludger didn’t bother with greetings.
“It was about time for him to answer,” he said flatly.
Yvar’s mouth tightened, already tired.
“If he answered at all,” Yvar replied, turning the letter slightly so Ludger could see the seal again. “Rufas is either angry… or disappointed… about your failure to eliminate the giant sea monster.”
Ludger’s shoulders rose and fell in a small shrug.
“So?”
Yvar stared at him, then at the letter, then back again, like he was trying to decide whether Ludger was fearless or just fundamentally broken. Ludger’s tone stayed even. Almost bored.
“I told him the mission was half complete,” he said. “That was the truth.”
“And the other half?” Yvar asked, because of course he did.
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly, not in irritation, just focus.
“The other half isn’t something you swing a sword at,” he said. “Not yet.”
Yvar exhaled through his nose. “That’s going to go over well.”
Ludger didn’t react. He had already made peace with it. Rufas could be angry. Rufas could be disappointed. Rufas could write a threatening letter with a dozen pretty words and a seal that smelled like authority.
None of it changed what had happened out at sea. None of it changed what the warden was, or what it knew, or what it had shown him. For Ludger, the emotional part had already sunk and settled. Water under the bridge. He looked at the letter like it was a weather report.
“Open it,” Ludger said.
Yvar broke the seal with the careful irritation of a man handling a poisonous insect. He unfolded the page, scanned the first line, and visibly decided his day had already used up its allotted amount of noble nonsense. Without a word, he extended the letter
toward Ludger.
“You wanted it,” Yvar said flatly. “I’d like to avoid the headache.”