All Jobs and Classes! I Just Wanted One Skill, Not Them All!

Eclaire flinched. It was small. Very small. A twitch more than a movement. But it was there.

And despite all her training, despite the polished control and the practiced calm, that was enough to make it obvious the man had struck dead center.

Ludger’s masked breathing remained slow and wrong beside her. The informant noticed everything anyway.

He folded his hands on the table and said, in the same almost kindly tone, “You don’t have to worry too much.”

Eclaire kept her face still now, but her eyes had sharpened dangerously.

“Really,” he said. “The people who want you dead won’t find useful clues until the whole Empire is shaken down.”

He let that settle for a second.

Then added, “And only one family could do that now.”

He didn’t say the name. He didn’t need to. The implication was obvious.

The Rodericks.

Even after a full year, it seemed everyone still believed they would return. Return and reclaim. Return and tear through the balance of power. Return and shake the Empire badly enough that old secrets, hidden bloodlines, inconvenient survivors, and sheltered pieces like Eclaire would all be dragged into the light whether they wanted it or not.

And who knew what would happen then. The thought sat in the tent like another person. Eclaire’s face stayed composed, but only because her training was waging war against the instinct to react.

Ludger, meanwhile, sat absolutely still. But in the dark behind the mask, his eyes had narrowed. Because now the man had confirmed two things at once. He knew too much. And he was comfortable proving it.

Despite everything the man had just said, Ludger still did not react. At least not in the way most people would.

No sudden movement. No sharp question. No visible anger. He simply sat there in the chair with the dark hood shadowing his eyes and the mask turning his breathing into that faintly wrong echo, as if being read apart in a black-market tent under the capital was merely one more inconvenience added to an already irritating week.

The man kept smiling at him. Softly. Patiently. Almost like he was waiting for Ludger to catch up to something. Then he raised one hand and passed it over his own face. The movement was simple.

Almost lazy. But the moment his fingers crossed his features, the ordinary face began to change.

The forgettable brown hair shifted first, then the line of the jaw, the weight of the brows, the nose, the shape of the mouth, even the set of the eyes. The harmless, average man dissolved like a bad lie being peeled away, and in his place emerged a face Ludger knew very well.

Torvares. Ludger’s eyes opened wider. Not by much. But enough. The man, no, the illusionist, watched that tiny reaction with obvious satisfaction.

So. That was him. The one Ludger had been looking for. The one who had left hints, threads, clues, and enough deliberate nonsense behind that the trail had become its own form of provocation.

The illusionist asked, “Does that answer your doubts?”

Ludger stared at him for a second longer.

Then he said, flatly, “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

The illusionist, still wearing Torvares’s face with absurd ease, gave a small shrug.

“I expected you would eventually find clues leading to the black market,” he said. “Though I thought it would take you a few more months.”

His smile sharpened slightly.

“Asking Eclaire for help was unexpected even for me.”

That made Eclaire’s expression tighten, though only a little. Ludger crossed his arms. There was no point pretending surprise no longer existed. The man had already forced the issue by changing faces in front of them like that. So he asked the simplest question.

“Who are you?”

The illusionist’s smile remained maddeningly ordinary despite the fact that he was now wearing another man’s identity like a coat.

“I told you already,” he said. “I could be anyone I wanted.”

Ludger’s gaze hardened. The illusionist spread one hand lightly.

“And no one as well.”

That answer sat there for a moment.

Then he added, still perfectly calm, “So giving you a proper introduction would be useless.”

Which was, infuriatingly, the kind of answer someone like that would give and fully believe. A name implied shape. Limit. Origin. A proper place in the world. This man clearly treated all of those as optional.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Ludger leaned forward slightly, arms still crossed, the distorted breathing from the mask going quiet enough that the silence around the table tightened.

Then he asked, in a voice that came out low and wrong through the filter, “Why?”

The illusionist said nothing at first. Ludger’s eyes stayed fixed on him.

“Why did you try to make me learn about my father’s past by using yourself as the prize at the end of it?” he asked. “Why turn finding you into a test tied to my father’s family?”

The words were calm. That made them heavier.

Eclaire remained silent beside him, but even she could feel the shift. This was no longer curiosity. No longer annoyance alone. Ludger had followed the trail, pulled apart lies, fought through dead ends, and found something ugly and real buried under it all. Now he wanted to know why someone had chosen to drag him through that route instead of simply speaking.

The illusionist studied him for a second, Torvares’s face still resting over his real one like a well-fitted lie. Then he answered.

“Because I wanted to learn how resourceful and intelligent you actually are.”

Ludger did not blink. The illusionist continued in the same composed tone.

“The rumors around you were… uneven.” A faint smile touched his mouth. “Strong. Violent. Effective. A very dangerous boy. A mage with terrifying adaptability. Someone who crushes problems quickly and cleans up what remains.”

His eyes sharpened slightly.

“But also, to many people, primarily a brute.”

That made Ludger’s stare flatten further. The illusionist noticed and did not stop.

“A gifted brute, yes. A talented brute. A frightening brute.” He tilted his head slightly. “But still a brute.”

Ludger’s voice came back colder.

“If you’re truly an information broker, trusting too much in rumors is simply stupid.”

That made the illusionist smile more honestly than before.

“Correct,” he said. “And I didn’t.”

He folded his hands together on the table again.

“I knew you were not stupid. That much was obvious even from a distance. People like Torvares do not hand real trust to fools, and monsters do not keep losing to fools just because the fool is enthusiastic enough.” His smile faded slightly into something more analytical. “But knowing someone is not stupid is not the same as knowing how smart they are.”

Ludger said nothing. The illusionist went on.

“So I gave you a trail that required more than force. More than survival. More than talent in battle.” He spoke as if explaining the logic of a crafted mechanism. “I wanted to see how you handled layered clues, broken motives, social distance, dead records, old rumors, hidden structures, and the possibility that the obvious answer was not the real one.”

His eyes stayed on Ludger.

“And I wanted to see how you would keep going once the trail became personal.”

That part sat in the air longer. Because it was true. He had known exactly what he was doing. Ludger’s gaze darkened behind the shadow of the hood.

“So you used my family.”

“I used a mystery connected to your family,” the illusionist corrected.

“That is not better.”

“No,” the illusionist said calmly. “It isn’t.”

That answer took a little force out of the moment simply because it wasn’t defensive. He wasn’t pretending innocence. He wasn’t dressing the thing up as kindness. He was just saying what it was.

The illusionist continued, “I needed you invested one hundred percent.”

Eclaire’s eyes shifted slightly at that. Ludger did not move. The illusionist spread one hand lightly.

“If I had dangled a stranger’s dead secrets in front of you, you might still have pursued the trail. You are curious enough, and dangerous enough, for that.” His tone remained even. “But not with the same sharpness. Not with the same refusal to let go. Once the trail touched Arslan’s past, it stopped being an interesting puzzle and became something you would not abandon.”

Ludger’s silence at that point was colder than any interruption would have been. The illusionist felt it. Actually felt it. For the first time since they sat down, a trace of caution entered his expression. Nothing dramatic, but enough that he raised both hands slightly, palms open.

“It was not my intention to cause distress,” he said.

Ludger’s altered breathing echoed once through the mask.

The illusionist held his gaze and added, “Or trouble for its own sake.”

That did not make the tension disappear. It did make him continue more carefully.

“I assumed,” he said, “that using such means to make you aware of what had happened to Arslan’s parents was still better than simply knocking on your door and telling you what I knew.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. The illusionist pressed on before the objection came.

“Think about that version for a moment,” he said. “An unknown man appears. He tells you your father’s family may have been murdered deliberately. He claims old noble deaths, apothecary suppression, curse research, and underworld links all connect. He expects to be believed. Why?” A small pause. “Because he says so?”

That was the problem. And all three of them knew it. The illusionist lowered his hands slowly.

“If I had walked into Lionfang or approached you directly and spoken plainly, you would not have trusted me,” he said. “Torvares might have listened. You might have investigated anyway. But you would have done so while devoting half your effort to questioning me rather than the trail.” His eyes remained steady. “This way, the evidence spoke before I did.”

Ludger’s voice came out flatter than before.

“You still manipulated the path.”

“Yes.”

“You still decided I should learn this in the worst possible way.”

The illusionist took half a second before answering.

“In the most effective way I could construct,” he said.

That was the kind of answer that made hitting someone feel educational. Ludger’s arms remained crossed, but the pressure in his posture changed just slightly, enough that Eclaire could tell he was holding a very specific amount of annoyance in place by force. The illusionist noticed too.

So he added, quieter now, “I am not claiming it was kind.”

The room remained silent.

Then he said, “Only that I believed it was better than ignorance and stronger than a warning delivered by a stranger.”

Ludger kept staring at him.

The illusionist, wearing Torvares’s face like a borrowed insult, did not look away.

“I knew that if you found the truth yourself,” he said, “you would trust it more deeply. And once you trusted it, you would act.”

Ludger’s reply was immediate.

“You seem very comfortable deciding that for other people.”

That one struck properly. The illusionist’s smile thinned.

“Yes,” he said after a moment. “That is one of my worse traits.”

For once, there was no cleverness in the answer. Just admission.