Chapter 731
Ludger blinked once. Then he nodded to himself, small and satisfied.
Finally.
Hunter wasn’t “Archer.” It wasn’t the pure discipline of someone who lived with a bow in their hands.
It was his version of it. Practical. Results-driven. A class for killing things efficiently, whether with fists, blades, traps, or range.
And Power Shot…
That one felt obvious the moment it settled into him. Not a spell. Not a flashy technique. A conversion.
A way to shove more force into a single release, turning a normal shot into something that punched through scale and bone like the arrow was angry about existing.
He exhaled slowly. Now he just had to practice the hell out of it. Fortunately, Ludger already knew the shortcut the System never admitted existed.
Don’t “train” in empty yards. Don’t fire at targets that didn’t fight back.
If you wanted insane experience gains, you did it where it mattered, under pressure, with consequences, with real variables trying to kill you. While also understanding the skill.
You bypassed steps.
You learned in the place that punished mistakes.
He watched Harold and Aleia reposition as the chamber settled again, Selene already prowling ahead like she was bored with the first kill. Cor stood back, staff planted, eyes scanning for a second threat.
The recruits finally moved.
Two of them waded into the shallow water with grimaces, grabbed the reptilian under its forelimbs, and dragged the heavy body toward a drier patch of stone. Water sluiced off the scales in sheets. The creature looked even more armored out of the pool overlapping plates, ridges, and that thick spine line that made it feel more like living gear than flesh.
“Knives,” Harold reminded, voice firm. “Clean cuts.”
The recruits nodded and got to work.
Blades slid under the edge of the scales with careful prying motions. The first few attempts were clumsy, too much force, wrong angle until one of the veterans corrected their hand placement with a short, sharp gesture.
A scale came free with a wet sound and was held up like a trophy. Then another. Then another. They weren’t getting much.
The smaller scales, most of what covered the limbs and lower body, were thin and frail, more like hardened skin than armor. They cracked easily, flexed wrong, and split when a knife slid under them too aggressively.
Useful for small applications, maybe. Reinforcing gloves. Layering in light gear. But not the big prize. Not yet. Still, Ludger watched with interest. Not because scales were exciting. Because the process was.
Harvesting. Sorting. Learning what mattered and what didn’t. Turning a dead monster into materials that would become tools, armor, and profit.
It was the same principle as teaching. Same principle as runes. Same principle as everything Ludger built: take chaos, break it down, and make it useful. His fingers brushed the bowstring again, feeling the tension with new familiarity.
Hunter class. Power Shot. A new path opened. And the labyrinth offered the perfect place to walk it hard enough that the System had no choice but to keep paying him in progress.
Aleia didn’t praise him. She wasn’t the type. She simply watched him with calm, assessing eyes while the recruits finished prying loose what scales they could salvage. Her gaze drifted from the bow on his back to his hands, to the way his posture had subtly shifted.
Then she spoke, voice quiet enough that it felt like instruction instead of commentary.
“You should move up front,” Aleia said. “And start aiming at living targets next.”
Ludger looked at her.
“That’s where real experience is gained,” she added, tone matter-of-fact. “Targets don’t move in yards. They don’t try to eat you.”
Ludger nodded once. He didn’t argue. He didn’t pretend he wanted a safer route. He’d already decided the same thing. He stepped forward, sliding into position beside Harold.
Harold glanced at him, eyebrow raised slightly, but didn’t object. If anything, his expression said fine, show me.
Ludger didn’t waste words. He let the labyrinth speak. He sent Seismic Sense down through the wet stone under their feet, spreading it forward like invisible fingers tracing the shape of the world. The terrain unfolded in his mind: the slope of the corridor, the hollow pockets where water pooled, the thin ridges where stone was brittle, the larger chamber ahead with a shallow basin.
And then… A distortion. A body-shaped mass that didn’t match the rock. Low. Flat. Pressed into the basin like a log. Camouflaged in a pool of water. It was waiting.
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Ludger’s eyes narrowed. He lifted a hand and Harold halted immediately, reading the signal without needing explanation. The recruits behind them quieted, tension rising.
Ludger didn’t point. He didn’t whisper. He simply readied his bow. The string caught his fingers. His new class framework settled behind the motion like a fresh joint slotting into place.
He nocked an arrow… And he began to charge Power Shot.
The skill was level 01, barely seeded into him. The charge window was short, barely more than a heartbeat. A second. That was all it allowed, for now. But Ludger didn’t treat limits as walls.
He treated them like things to route around.
He drew. Power Shot flared, tight, focused, a surge of force gathering behind the arrow like a compressed punch.
The skill wanted a simple input: hold, charge, release.
But Ludger had Monk discipline etched into his bones. Breath control. Internal channeling. The ability to push stamina into a shape without losing coherence.
He didn’t dump mana into the shot like a mage would. He fed it fuel, stamina, steady and controlled, forcing his body to support the strain so the mana imprint stayed clean.
For that single second, his whole frame became a brace. His senses sharpened. Seismic Sense gave him the exact contour of the pool.
The creature’s position was clear in his head like a diagram: head angled slightly left, spine curved, limbs tucked.
He didn’t need to see it. He just needed to trust the map. Ludger released. The arrow snapped forward and plunged into the water.
It didn’t skip. Didn’t wobble. It drove straight, powered like a thrown spear rather than a light shaft.
For a moment, everyone stared.
Selene’s mouth opened slightly, amused. One of the recruits blinked like Ludger had just fired at a puddle out of boredom. Harold’s expression tightened, a question forming.
Even Aleia’s calm eyes sharpened. At first, it looked like nothing happened.
The pool rippled. The arrow vanished beneath the surface. And then… Dark red bloom spread through the water, slow at first, then rushing outward in a widening stain.
The ripples changed. Something under the surface thrashed once, violent enough that the water slapped against the stone edge.
Then it went still. The recruits sucked in breaths like they’d forgotten they were holding them.
Selene let out a low whistle. “Oh.”
Harold’s gaze flicked from the bloodied pool to Ludger, then back again, as if recalculating what “normal” meant with this boy beside him.
Aleia studied Ludger’s posture, how he’d braced, how his breathing stayed even, how he’d fired through water like it was air.
“Good,” she said simply.
Ludger didn’t smile. He just nocked another arrow, eyes narrowing toward the darkness ahead. Because now the labyrinth knew something important. Someone was hunting it back.
Ludger did it again. And again.
Not randomly, never randomly. He used Seismic Sense like a cheat code the labyrinth didn’t deserve him having, mapping shallow pools and wet depressions where bodies could hide. Every time the ground told him something is wrong here, he raised the bow, drew, and fed Power Shot just enough to turn “arrow” into “problem.”
It worked. Mostly. The problem was simpler. The bow.
The string would start to sing in a wrong way, too tight, too strained, after a while. The fibers didn’t just stretch. They protested. There was a point where one more second would mean a snap, and a snapped bowstring in a labyrinth wasn’t just failure.
It was losing a tool mid-fight. He tested the limit once, carefully, timing it. Ten seconds. That was the ceiling before the string started to feel like it wanted to become two pieces.
Ludger lowered the bow, exhaled, and accepted it without frustration. Ten seconds was enough. Because the System paid him for the charge. Cleanly. Stupidly. Like it didn’t realize what kind of monster it was enabling.
One point of experience per second charged.
It didn’t matter if he released into a target every time. The act of charging, of shaping the technique under pressure, was experience.
Which meant the math was brutal and beautiful. Ten seconds per shot. Ten experience. Repeat. He didn’t need a miracle. He just needed a better bow. A stronger string. Better limbs. Better materials that wouldn’t whine when he packed power into the draw.
And once he had that… He’d level the class and the skill faster than the wind. Ludger’s eyes narrowed as he filed the thought away. Strongest bow I can buy. Then improve it. Then replace it.
He’d already started doing it with everything else. There was no reason this would be different. Behind him, Harold watched the whole process with a face that looked like someone had swapped the rules on him mid-game.
After the third “blood in the water” moment, Harold finally muttered, loud enough to be heard.
“Aleia,” he said, “did you actually teach him anything?”
Aleia didn’t even blink.
“Yes,” she said calmly.
Harold’s eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t look like it.”
Aleia glanced sideways at him, expression flat as stone.
“I taught more than Selene,” she said.
Selene, who had been strolling like the labyrinth was her personal garden, immediately spun around in outrage.
“Hey!” she protested. “That’s not fair!”
Cor grunted from behind them, sounding entertained despite himself.
Selene jabbed a finger in Ludger’s direction. “I taught Ludger more than just punching and kicking!”
Ludger didn’t look back. He was scanning the floor with Seismic Sense again, already hunting the next wrong shape in the stone. Selene continued anyway, because Selene couldn’t let an insult go unanswered.
“I taught you timing,” she declared. “And misdirection. And how to look innocent right before you do something terrible.”
Harold snorted. “That last one he learned from his mother.”
Elaine wasn’t here, but somehow the air still felt colder.
Aleia’s mouth twitched, the smallest hint of amusement. Ludger finally spoke, tone deadpan as he nocked another arrow.
“Selene,” he said, “You never look innocent.”
Selene gasped like she’d been stabbed. “Rude.”
Harold shook his head, still staring at the bow like it was a betrayal. “He’s going to ruin archery.”
Aleia’s eyes followed Ludger’s draw hand, calm and sharp. “He’s going to ruin everything,” she corrected.
Ludger released another charged shot into a shallow pool.
A moment later, the water turned red. He didn’t respond to their banter. He just kept working. Because the labyrinth didn’t care who taught him what. And neither did the System.