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

Ludger stayed silent long enough for the filtered breathing to fill the space once, twice.

Then he said, “If you wanted to test whether I was intelligent, there were less disgusting ways to do it.”

The illusionist inclined his head slightly.

“Probably.”

“Definitely.”

“That depends on whether the goal was comfort or certainty.”

Ludger’s eyes sharpened again. The illusionist gave a small shrug.

“I chose certainty.”

Of course he had. Men like this always did. They cut first through the cleanest line they saw and only afterward considered who had been standing there when the blade passed through.

Eclaire finally spoke, voice cool.

“And if he had failed?”

The illusionist looked at her.

“If he had failed to reach me,” he said, “then eventually I would have adjusted the path. I would have kept my distance, though.”

That answer did not help. Ludger caught it instantly.

“Eventually.”

The illusionist did not flinch.

“Yes.”

Ludger let the word hang there a moment, then gave a slow nod that somehow looked more threatening than anger.

“I see.”

The illusionist watched him carefully now. Ludger’s voice came out low and distorted through the mask.

“You built a test out of my father’s dead family, watched me walk through it, and decided that was acceptable because it was efficient.”

The illusionist answered in the same calm tone.

“I decided it was worth the cost.”

That made the air go cold for a second. Not because the tent changed. Because Ludger did. Just slightly. Enough to remind the room what kind of person sat behind the mask when patience thinned out.

Then, after a long moment, he said, “You better have something more useful than philosophy after this.”

The illusionist’s expression settled again.

“I do.”

Ludger leaned back by a fraction.

“Good,” he said. “Because if this entire performance was only for your curiosity, I’m going to become much less polite.”

Beside him, Eclaire did not move. Across from them, the illusionist smiled faintly again. And this time, for once, the smile looked a little less certain. The man passed his hand over his face again. This time Ludger watched more carefully.

Now that he had seen the trick once, he could feel the mana moving when it happened. Not in the crude way of flesh being reshaped or bone being shifted. It wasn’t transformation in the normal sense.

The mana wasn’t changing his face. Not really. It was distorting the light around it somehow. Bending it. Refracting it. Guiding what the eye received until the mind accepted a different face as truth. The features underneath remained, but the image reaching the viewer was altered just enough to become someone else entirely.

A refined illusion. Annoyingly elegant.

By the time the man’s hand dropped, Torvares’s face was gone again, replaced by that ordinary, forgettable one. Ludger didn’t waste time on it.

He asked, “Who wanted my dad’s parents dead?”

And before the illusionist could answer, Ludger took out the runic bracer he had crafted and placed it on the table in front of him. The illusionist’s brows lifted slightly. Not from greed exactly. From interest. Real interest.

He picked it up with careful fingers and turned it once under the candlelight, his eyes moving over the runes with the sort of attention that only came from knowing exactly how much value a thing like that might carry.

The candle flame reflected off the engraved surfaces in fine, shifting lines.

The illusionist’s smile returned, softer this time.

“You do work quickly,” he murmured.

Ludger did not react. The illusionist continued examining the bracer as he answered.

“It was the Rodericks.”

The words landed with all the softness of a blade sliding into place. Eclaire stayed perfectly still. Ludger’s breathing through the mask remained controlled. The illusionist rotated the bracer again, inspecting one of the layered rune channels with open admiration before going on.

“Back then,” he said, “that family of apothecaries began to notice something other healers and physicians did not. Or perhaps did not dare to notice.”

His finger hovered over one carved line, not touching it yet.

“They realized that a number of deaths among the upper circles were not natural, not inherited, and not random wasting illnesses.” His eyes lifted briefly toward Ludger. “They identified the pattern of curse degradation.”

Ludger said nothing.

The illusionist continued, “Worse, from the Rodericks’ perspective, they did more than notice. They started developing a means to purge the curse.”

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There it was. Clean. Simple. Ugly.

“So they were disposed of,” the illusionist said.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed behind the mask. Disposed of. Like waste. Like an obstacle in the path of a family that had decided too many useful people were allowed to live. His voice came out low and distorted.

“And Hans?”

“A hired torch,” the illusionist said. “A very dangerous one, but still only a tool.”

Ludger’s jaw tightened slightly. That fit too well. Arslan’s family had not died because of some inheritance squabble or merchant rivalry that got out of hand. They had died because they found a way to interfere with a system the Rodericks wanted kept in place.

Which meant his father’s family had been killed for being too competent. Too useful. Too dangerous to the wrong people. Ludger’s next words came immediately.

“The Obsidian Sword is still active.”

The illusionist’s eyes returned to the bracer.

“Yes.”

“Even though the Rodericks vanished over a year ago.”

“Yes.”

Ludger leaned slightly forward.

“So their guild master is still working for them.”

The illusionist nodded once while continuing to inspect the runes, clearly unwilling to stop appreciating the craftsmanship even while discussing murder, conspiracies, and one of the Empire’s filthiest secrets.

“Yes,” he said. “Or at the very least, still working within the structure they left behind.”

That was answer enough.

Ludger’s breathing echoed once through the mask.

“Who is he?”

This time the illusionist did stop looking at the bracer for a moment. Not because the answer was difficult. Because he knew exactly what it meant.

Then he said, “General Armandis.”

The name settled over the table like a fresh weight. Eclaire’s eyes sharpened instantly. The illusionist’s tone stayed calm.

“The right hand of the Commander of all Imperial Forces, Orleandul.”

That made even the black market noise outside seem farther away for a second.

Not because it disappeared. Because the scale of the answer swallowed it. Ludger sat absolutely still.

General Armandis.

Not some hidden noble cousin. Not just a guild master wearing noble coin. An imperial general.

A man close enough to the center of military power that most people would sooner accuse a cathedral of smuggling demons than imagine him running an underworld network under the capital. The illusionist set the bracer down with almost respectful care.

“He is the visible shield and the invisible knife both,” he said. “A man with status, command, legitimacy, and a reputation solid enough that suspicions slide off him unless they are backed by overwhelming proof.”

Ludger’s voice was flat.

“And he’s been running the Obsidian Sword.”

“Yes.”

“For the Rodericks.”

The illusionist tilted one hand slightly.

“For them, with them, beneath them, and perhaps now partly for himself.” His expression remained mild. “Power webs are rarely clean enough to keep ownership simple.”

That was probably true. Ludger hated that it was probably true. Eclaire finally spoke, her voice quieter than before.

“A general of the Empire overseeing an underworld guild tied to curse murders and black-market infrastructure under the nobles’ district.”

The illusionist nodded.

“Yes.”

“And no one knows.”

The ordinary smile returned.

“Oh, some people know pieces,” he said. “Some suspect one layer. Some profit from not seeing the rest. That is how structures like this survive.”

Ludger’s eyes stayed fixed on him.

“How certain are you?”

The illusionist met his gaze.

“Certain enough that I did not hesitate to say his name after you placed that on the table.”

His eyes flicked once toward the bracer. That was answer enough too. Ludger looked down at it for half a second. A trade piece. A crafted lure.

And now the price attached to it was a name high enough to shake half the Empire if spoken in the wrong room. When he looked up again, there was less of a boy in his posture and more of the person who had buried traffickers alive, punched monsters to death, and kept walking when the world gave him reasons to stop.

Ludger remained still for a moment after hearing the name.

Then he said, “It’s pretty convenient.”

The illusionist watched him calmly.

“The Rodericks being behind the death of my grandparents and aunt,” Ludger continued, his distorted voice low and steady, “is convenient for me. I wanted them dead anyway.”

There was no heat in the words. That made them worse. Because it meant he wasn’t speaking from outrage alone. He was stating a simple fact. Before learning any of this, he had already decided the Rodericks were enemies worth killing. Them being tied directly to Arslan’s family did not create that desire.

It just sharpened it.

Ludger’s eyes stayed fixed on the man across from him.

“But the information about the general is dubious.”

Eclaire did not move, but her attention sharpened slightly at that. Ludger continued.

“It doesn’t make sense cleanly enough,” he said. “A man like that running the Obsidian Sword personally, tied to a vanished family, while still serving as the right hand of the Commander of all Imperial Forces? That is too big to accept because someone in a tent says so.”

The illusionist smiled faintly. Ludger’s voice stayed flat.

“I’m not fighting him without real proof.”

That line sat in the air with all the weight it deserved.

Because “fighting him” did not mean a personal grudge, or a quiet alley problem, or even one more hidden corpse in a world already full of them. It meant taking aim at someone close to the military heart of the Empire. A man whose rank alone could turn a rumor into treason and a suspicion into a massacre if handled badly.

The illusionist leaned back slightly.

“I have nothing to show you,” he said. “I simply know.”

Ludger did not blink.

“That,” he said, “is exactly the sort of thing someone would say if they wanted to manipulate me into killing a man for them.”

Eclaire’s eyes shifted very slightly toward the illusionist. No reaction came from his face beyond the same calm, infuriating ease he had worn from the beginning.

“That could be true,” he admitted.

The answer was so smooth it almost sounded lazy.

Then he added, “But if I wanted the man dead, I could kill him myself.”

That made Ludger’s eyes narrow. Not because of the confidence. Because the man didn’t sound like he was boasting. He sounded like he was correcting an inefficient line of thought. The illusionist passed his hand over his face again.

Ludger watched the mana this time more sharply than before, following the subtle distortion as it bent the light around the features beneath. The ordinary face blurred. Shifted. Reassembled.

And in the next moment, the man sitting across from them was no longer the forgettable broker, nor Torvares.

He had become Orleandul.

The Commander of the Imperial Forces. Even Eclaire’s control nearly cracked at that. Not openly. Not much. But there was a stillness that came from being too close to something absurdly dangerous and knowing it.

The illusionist smiled with Orleandul’s face. Same calm eyes. Same mild mouth. Only now they rested inside the features of the single man whose authority stood above General Armandis in the Empire’s military chain.

The message was immediate and ugly. If he could wear that face this perfectly, then he could get close. Very close.

Ludger’s posture did not change.

But his attention sharpened into something harder.

The illusionist, wearing Orleandul’s face as lightly as a different coat, said, “You see the problem.”

Ludger’s altered breathing echoed once through the mask.

“Yes,” he said.

Because he did. An illusionist like this did not need armies to kill a man. He needed access, timing, and nerve. And clearly, he had all three.