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

Eclaire blinked once and looked up. Ludger’s expression remained flat.

“She should know who you are by now.”

That was true enough. At least in outline. Enough, anyway, that simple suspicion should have already given way to some stable position, hostility, curiosity, acceptance, something. Eclaire was quiet for a second before answering.

“She probably didn’t like being kept in the dark about my identity.”

That made Ludger’s eyes narrow faintly.

“Yes,” he said. “She wouldn’t.”

Eclaire folded her hands together in her lap and continued.

“She visited Lionfang a few times when you were away,” she said. “And I tried to speak with her then.”

Ludger glanced at her. Eclaire’s tone stayed calm, but there was a thin edge of remembered awkwardness underneath it now.

“She was cordial,” she said. “Perfectly polite. Never rude. Never dismissive in any obvious way.”

That sounded exactly like Viola when she had decided not to be cruel but also not to give anything freely. Eclaire added, “But for some reason, she didn’t try to become my friend. Still, only this time… she looked particularly displeased for some reason.”

Ludger looked at her for a second. Then away again. Because the answer to that was not actually difficult.

That alone would be enough to make her hold the line. Not because Viola was petty. Because she cared too much to welcome someone fully while still being denied the shape of what that person meant to the people around her.

Especially in her own territory. Especially while Ludger was away. Especially if Eclaire herself had approached carefully, politely, intelligently, in other words, in the exact way that made trained people harder to trust. Ludger clicked his tongue softly.

“She probably thought it was suspicious.”

Eclaire gave a small, dry exhale.

“It was suspicious.”

“Yes.”

That answer made one corner of her mouth move faintly. Not quite a smile.

“Then perhaps I shouldn’t blame her too much,” she said.

“That would be wise.”

Eclaire leaned back slightly into the seat.

“I still thought she might try.”

Ludger was quiet for a moment, then said, “Viola doesn’t half-do things she cares about.”

Eclaire turned that over in her head. That did fit.

If Viola didn’t know whether to trust someone, then she wouldn’t fake warmth just to smooth the air. She would be polite, but keep the real distance intact until the answer became clear enough to matter.

In a different person, that might have been called pride. In Viola, it sounded more like honesty mixed with territorial instinct.

The runic carriage kept humming through the dark toward Lionfang while the conversation settled again into quiet. Outside, stone and earth rushed past unseen. Inside, the weight of the coming work remained where it had always been, waiting.

Sealed labyrinths. Torvares’s spies. Rowan and Jennifer. The finished suit. Armandis. And now, apparently, one more thing to manage: The inevitable day when Viola stopped being kept at the edge of the truth and decided what she wanted to do with it.

They returned to Lionfang when the sun was setting.

The sky over the rebuilt town had turned a deep orange-red, the light dragging long shadows over the walls, the guild grounds, and the busier parts of the settlement where people were still wrapping up the last work of the day. The runic carriage slowed, settled, and finally stopped.

Ludger stepped out first. Eclaire followed a moment later.

For a second, the two of them just stood there in the evening light, back in Lionfang after the capital’s polished rot and the black market hidden beneath it. The difference between the two places felt sharp now. Lionfang was rough, imperfect, noisy, and painfully alive. The capital had looked cleaner, but too much of it had felt like a corpse pretending to breathe.

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They parted ways without saying much. No long farewell. No pointless repetition of what they already knew.

Ludger didn’t say that he would need her help, and the help of Rowan and Jennifer, soon. He didn’t need to. Eclaire understood it anyway.

That much had already settled between them in the carriage. She gave him one small nod, the kind that meant I know, and then she turned and headed off toward the part of town that had become hers for now.

No fuss. No attempt to attach herself to the next step before he had finished deciding its exact shape. Useful. Ludger watched her go for half a second, then turned away himself and started walking.

Now it was simple. Or rather, the next stage was simple in the way sharp problems sometimes were. He had to wait for Raukor and Julia to finish the suit. Once that was done, he would invade one of the sealed labyrinths.

Because the structure beneath the Empire had already shown what kind of thing it was, and places like that did not usually open their mouths just because someone knocked properly.

So yes. The suit first. Then the labyrinth. Then whoever was stupid enough to think sealed stone and old authority would stop him from asking questions the hard way.

That part was clear. The problem was the time in between. What should he do meanwhile? Ludger walked through Lionfang’s evening noise while the question turned over in his head.

He could start with Torvares’s side of things. Push the old bull harder. Make sure the spy network actually moved with urgency instead of noble caution. But not enough on its own.

He could also speak with Rowan and Jennifer soon, if Eclaire managed that properly. Learn what their families knew. Learn how sealed labyrinths were really guarded when noble houses thought no one important was watching. Learn the difference between official restrictions and the practical habits people fell into around them.

He could also train with the new crossbows more.

They were too useful to leave under-practiced. In cramped tunnels, awkward stairwells, or narrow chambers where casting angles mattered, being able to snap one onto his wrist and fire freezing bolts one-handed could save time and lives. Probably his own first. Maybe someone else’s if they were lucky.

And beyond that…

There was always class work. Visible strength.

The annoying truth he had already acknowledged after fighting Hans still remained: if he wanted to keep many of his better abilities hidden, then the surface toolkit had to become overwhelming on its own. Pugilist had reached one goal, but not the end. Monk still needed work. Vector Adept was still new. Weighted Step had room to grow. The body itself could still become cleaner, deadlier, and more unfair before he walked into another place full of enemies who believed walls and titles would compensate for lacking talent.

So yes. Training too. That filled most of the space. But as he kept walking, one more thought settled in behind the rest. There were also the people. Aronia. The beastmen. The others who did not yet know what he had seen in the black market.

Ludger had dinner with his family that night. For once, the meal was quieter than usual.

Not empty. Not strained enough that anyone unfamiliar with them would have called it uncomfortable. The twins still made noise where they could. Elaine still kept the table from drifting into total chaos through sheer force of practical motherhood. Arslan still had the presence of a man who looked relaxed even when he was very obviously noticing everything.

But quieter. No one asked what Ludger had been doing in the last five days. That, in itself, said enough.

Apparently the fact that he didn’t come home smelling like blood, smoke, and burned flesh was already an improvement. Compared to the last time he returned from the capital, this version of Ludger probably looked almost reasonable.

Almost. Still, Arslan and Elaine both had the same feeling. Ludger could tell. He had done something worse than fighting a crazy pyromancer. The kind of worse that didn’t always stain the clothes.

Eventually, while they ate, Ludger looked between them and said, “You’re quieter than usual.”

Arslan snorted softly and said, “You’re one to talk.”

That was fair.

Ludger continued eating for a second before replying, “I’m just thinking about what I should do next for the guild.”

His tone stayed even.

“So you two don’t have to worry too much.”

Elaine gave him a look that made it very clear she did not accept “don’t worry” as a serious argument from a boy who regularly disappeared into things that would make older men write wills.

Still, instead of pressing the point directly, she said, “More houses would be welcome.”

That made Ludger’s attention sharpen slightly away from the darker thoughts circling in his head. Elaine continued, practical as ever.

“A lot more people have moved in since the last wave of immigrants arrived,” she said. “If you stay away for too long, some of them might actually leave again without proper residences.”

Ludger nodded once. Yes. That tracked.

The immigrants were pulling their weight just as planned. Working. Settling. Feeding labor, trade, and movement back into Lionfang. And more importantly, they were paying for the houses Ludger created for them. The system was functioning. The town was growing. The investment was proving itself.

Which meant Elaine was right. More housing mattered. For a second he thought simply about doing it the usual way, raise earth, shape structure, reinforce walls, finish units, move on.

But the thought stopped halfway through. Because now that he had mastered his Geomancer class, using insane amounts of mana on raw large-scale construction like that was starting to feel wasteful.

Not useless. Wasteful. It was like swinging a forged warhammer to crack nuts. Yes, it worked. But the more he understood the class, the more obvious it became that there were better uses for that scale of control than endlessly brute-forcing buildings into existence by himself.

Besides, another thought slid in right behind it.

Roads. If he used earth magic to create real routes, stable ones, well-compacted, durable, cleanly graded, then Lionsguard could sell that service to guild clients, merchants, settlements, and almost anyone trying to turn wild territory into functioning land. Roads meant traffic. Traffic meant trade. Trade meant influence. Influence meant more contracts, more stability, and more reasons for people to tie themselves to Lionsguard instead of drifting elsewhere.

That was already good.

Then the bigger realization hit. Ludger’s hand slowed slightly where it rested near his bowl. That was it. That was what he needed to do. Not just build more himself. Teach geomancy to others.