Still, Ludger wasn’t about to complain. He was gaining experience at a ridiculous pace without swinging a weapon or fighting for his life.

By the time Freyra finally dropped to a knee, panting and laughing like she’d just gone three rounds with a bear, the fire was almost out and everyone looked like they’d aged a year. At some point, she joined them for some reason.

“Enough,” Ludger said, voice calm but final. “You’ve used up your mana reserves. Any more and you’ll start burning your nerves instead.”

Rhea collapsed onto her back with a groan. “I can’t feel my arms.”

“Good,” he replied. “That means you used them correctly.”

The others laughed weakly. Even Freyra just nodded, too tired to argue.

Ludger stood, stretching his shoulders. The air around him shifted—heavy, full of lingering mana traces from their training.

“Rest,” he said. “Now it’s my turn.”

That earned him a few bewildered looks.

Taron blinked. “Wait, you’re still going to train now? After all that?”

Ludger gave a small shrug. “You are learning Overdrive. I still have to earn my part of the trade.”

Callen, half-asleep already, mumbled, “You mean… learning water and rune magic?”

“Exactly.”

He stepped closer to the dying fire, setting his hands in front of it, palms open. The flickering flame reflected in his eyes, calm and deliberate. “You’ve spent all your mana. Now you can’t interrupt. Perfect time for me to study without you blowing something up.”

Rhea managed a tired grin. “You’re really weird, you know that?”

“I’m aware,” Ludger said.

Callen stirred before the others, rubbing his eyes and sitting up with a faint groan. His hair was a mess, his mana still ragged from the Overdrive practice, but when he saw Ludger he frowned.

“You’re seriously still at it,” he muttered, pulling his cloak tighter.

Ludger didn’t look up. “Told you I was going to learn something tonight.”

Callen sighed, then pushed himself to his feet. “Understood. I’ll teach you first. Water’s easier to grasp than runes, anyway.”

That caught Ludger’s attention. “You’re volunteering?”

Callen shrugged, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Let’s call it a mercy lesson.”

Ludger gave a low hum of amusement but said nothing more, he followed him outside as Callen knelt near the small stream that ran past their camp. He cupped his hands and whispered, a faint blue sheen running over his fingers. The surface of the water rippled, lifted, and floated lazily in the air—a sphere shimmering in the moonlight.

“Basic water manipulation,” Callen said, letting the sphere swirl between his palms. “Mana flow with a cooling element. You already know Water Creation, so this should be familiar.”

He paused, eyeing Ludger curiously. “But why do you even want to learn more water spells? You’re already a monster with earth magic. You’ve built walls, bridges, and houses in minutes. If you focused purely on earth, you’d be unstoppable.”

Ludger tilted his head slightly, considering.

“Maybe,” he said. “But earth’s predictable. It does what I tell it to do. Water doesn’t.”

Callen frowned, not quite understanding.

Ludger leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes reflecting the pale glow of the hovering water. “It’s harder to control. It slips, resists form. You have to coax it instead of commanding it. That makes it… interesting.”

“Interesting?” Callen echoed, incredulous. “You’re learning a whole element just because you feel like it?”

“Pretty much.”

The mage blinked, then laughed softly, shaking his head. “You’re something else, sir.”

“Focused on learning,” Ludger corrected.

“Unbelievably focused, then.”

Callen waved his hand, the water sphere collapsing back into the stream with a soft splash. “Fine. Well, let’s start.”

Ludger smirked faintly and nodded. “Deal.”

And as the night deepened, the two of them crouched by the stream—the teacher and the ten-year-old vice guildmaster—while the moon watched them in silence, and the soft rhythm of moving water became the only sound in the cold, sleeping forest.

Ludger had assumed it would be simple.

He already knew Water Creation, after all—a spell he’d used countless times to conjure clean drinking water after long days of earth shaping. By comparison, coaxing water to move, to bend under his will, should’ve been easy.

It wasn’t.

An hour passed, and the small stream beside their camp remained stubbornly uncooperative. The droplets he tried to lift wobbled, collapsed, and splashed him in the face more than once. Each attempt left him frowning harder, the frustration building in quiet, precise increments.

He was missing something.

Callen, meanwhile, had slumped halfway onto a nearby log, his eyes glassy, voice growing sluggish. “You’re… overforcing it. You’re treating it like earth, but water doesn’t… obey pressure. You have to… mmm… persuade it.”

Ludger exhaled slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Right. Persuade the liquid. Pretty, please?”

He tried again, carefully channeling mana through his fingertips. The water trembled, swirled briefly—and then splattered all over his boots.

Callen chuckled weakly before yawning. “Told you. Water likes patience.”

Ludger gave him a sidelong glance. “You can go to sleep,” he said. “You’re barely conscious.”

Callen blinked, fighting a losing battle with fatigue. “Mm. You sure?”

“Yes.”

But before the boy could stumble off, Ludger asked, almost absently, “Callen—before you pass out, how would you define yourself? Aside from ‘water mage.’”

That got him a puzzled stare. “Define myself? Like, personality-wise?”

“No,” Ludger said. “Professionally. You said your master taught you water magic. What did she call herself?”

“Oh.” Callen rubbed his eyes, yawning again. “She always said she was a Rain Sorcerer. Sounded… poetic, I guess.”

Ludger tilted his head slightly. “Rain sorcerer… huh.”

He thought about that title for a moment. It wasn’t the kind of name you gave yourself casually—it carried something, something symbolic. Rain wasn’t raw water; it was movement, rhythm, transition.

But before he could press further, Callen was already half-asleep, mumbling, “Don’t… overthink it… just flow with it…” before toppling backward onto his bedroll.

Ludger watched him for a few seconds, then sighed. “Typical.”

He looked back to the stream, the moonlight catching the faint ripples on its surface.

“Rain sorcerer,” he murmured, testing the words quietly. “Interesting.”

Then he dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. There would be time to puzzle it out later. For now, the recruits were asleep, the fire was dying, and the eastern wind whispered through the trees like something waiting to see if he’d finally rest too.

Ludger didn’t sleep.

When Callen’s snoring faded into the low crackle of the dying fire, he settled cross-legged beside the stream, hands resting lightly on his knees. His breathing slowed until the night sounds seemed to move around him—the whisper of wind through branches, the steady rhythm of running water, the faint shifting of the earth beneath.

He let his Seismic Sense spread outward in quiet pulses, mana brushing through layers of soil and stone like sonar. The world unfolded in tremors and stillness: roots curled deep, rabbits burrowed in sleep, the occasional fox pacing near the treeline. Nothing larger, nothing dangerous. Just peace.

Again.

It had been that way every night since they’d left Lionfang—no ambushes, no bandits, no curious travelers. The absence of danger was almost suspicious in itself, but Ludger couldn’t decide if it was patience or paranoia keeping him awake.

The eastern sky began to pale by the time he opened his eyes. The first fingers of sunlight caught on the mountain peaks ahead, turning them gold for a heartbeat before the color faded into cold gray.

Behind him, the camp started to stir. Rhea’s voice was the first—complaining about sore arms—followed by Sera trying to quiet the horses. The smell of breakfast drifted from the fire pit as someone reheated last night’s stew.

He knew he should rest, even for an hour. But the question still itched at the back of his mind, sharp and insistent.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes on the stream. What am I missing?

He replayed every time he’d seen Callen use water magic—the way his hands moved in soft, circular motions instead of direct gestures, how his mana never forced but guided, how the water seemed to want to follow. It wasn’t domination; it was cooperation.

That contrasted completely with how he handled earth. Earth obeyed him because he pressed it into shape—raw precision, pressure, and weight. His style was control through structure. Callen’s was rhythm.

He tapped his fingers against his knee, thinking. The patterns were there, hidden under his own habit of over-engineering everything.

It’s there, he thought. I just need to see it differently.

He closed his eyes again, reaching out—not into the ground this time, but toward the stream. His mana brushed the surface, tentative, cautious. The current slipped away between his senses like silk.

Come on. Just one spark. One step forward.

The sun climbed higher, the light glinting off the rippling water. The camp behind him was alive again—voices, metal clinking, the thud of boots and laughter—but Ludger stayed still, caught between exhaustion and focus, waiting for that single elusive moment where understanding finally clicked.

Eventually, the morning came for real.

The sunlight cut through the mist, catching on the horses’ tack and the edges of the stone shelter Ludger had raised the night before. The smell of stew and charred bread filled the air, and for a while the recruits spoke quietly, trying not to disturb him as he sat by the stream, still unmoving, eyes half-closed.

He hadn’t made any progress.

Whatever connection he’d been chasing in the flow of water, it kept slipping just out of reach. When Callen called that breakfast was ready, Ludger simply exhaled, pushed himself to his feet, and joined them without a word.

After they ate, they broke camp and mounted up again. The road east stretched like a long ribbon of frost, winding toward the distant mountains.

Ludger rode near the front, posture a little slumped, eyelids half-lowered. His horse plodded obediently along, clearly used to carrying someone who thought in silence more than he spoke.

“You’re going to fall off that thing,” Freyra called from behind, voice bright and annoyingly awake.

He didn’t even turn his head. “Unlikely. Your voice is loud enough to keep me conscious. I think it’s echoing off the mountains already.”

A couple of the recruits tried—and failed—to stifle laughter. Freyra clicked her tongue, grinning despite herself. “Then I’ll keep talking, just to make sure you don’t crack your skull.”

“Appreciated,” Ludger muttered dryly.

They kept riding. The rhythm of hooves and the lazy chatter of the group filled the air, but most of the recruits’ glances drifted toward Ludger from time to time. The boy who had built houses out of nothing and teaching them Overdrive was now barely keeping his eyes open in the saddle.

Rhea whispered, “He really didn’t sleep?”

Taron shook his head. “Not a wink. I saw him meditating when I got up to add wood to the fire. He’s been checking the ground every night, too. Watch shifts included.”

Mira frowned. “Wait—he’s been taking every watch?”

It dawned on them slowly: none of them had been woken up for guard duty since they’d left the northern lands. Ludger had quietly handled it all himself, along with the route planning, scouting, hunting, and now—apparently—learning a whole new branch of magic.

The realization sat heavily among them. The easy laughter from moments ago faded into a quiet, uneasy silence.

Freyra glanced ahead, her grin faltering a little as she watched the vice guildmaster ride on, his head tilted just slightly, eyes half shut but still scanning the horizon with that same stubborn focus.

He wasn’t tireless after all. He was just too used to carrying the weight himself.

Rhea shifted in her saddle and sighed. “Next stop we make… I’ll take first watch.”

“Yeah,” Taron agreed softly. “Me too.”

No one argued.

And so the group rode on, the mountains looming closer with every mile, the sound of hooves steady and the air between them quieter than before.

The world blurred around him as the day dragged on.

The trail was long and straight, framed by gray cliffs and pale morning light. Ludger’s head felt heavier with every step of the horse beneath him.

His focus wavered.

He wanted to call for a halt—to just rest, even for ten minutes—but the thought of wasting daylight clawed at him. The sooner they reached Maurien, the sooner this job would end. Besides, he told himself, it wasn’t like he couldn’t stay awake. He’d handled worse.

…Probably.

He exhaled slowly, eyes half-lidded. Should’ve learned a skill for sleeping while riding, he thought dully. I’d call it… Sleep Rider. Rank F. Requirement: sheer stupidity.

The horse snorted as if agreeing.

But even as his body begged for rest, his mind refused to stop. It kept circling back to the same unsolved problem—the elusive logic of water magic.

Images drifted through his fatigue like half-finished sketches: Callen shaping a water orb in the north, calm and focused… the shimmer of his spells near frozen walls… and later, during the trip south, the boy frowning, muttering that “the mana here feels off” whenever the terrain grew too dry.

Ludger blinked, rubbing his eyes.

Not good enough mana, Callen had said. And every time he’d said that, they’d been traveling through dried earth, brittle grass, low humidity.

Earth mana.

It hit him all at once. Callen hadn’t been struggling with his own control—he’d been struggling with the environment.

Water didn’t obey where there was no moisture to grasp. But if mana could create the medium…

Ludger’s eyes snapped open, the drowsiness burned away by sudden clarity.

He straightened in the saddle, ignoring Freyra’s startled look. His hand rose slowly, palm open, feeling the faint tremor of air brushing against his skin. He drew a breath, focusing—not on the ground, not on the stone, but on the space between.

Moisture. Invisible, faint, but there. Always there.

He swept his hand sideways through the air. His mana followed.

The air rippled—first a shimmer, then a distortion. Tiny beads formed, glistening in the sunlight. They gathered in his palm, spinning, coalescing into a sphere of clear blue water.

The recruits gasped.

Ludger tilted his wrist slightly, then flicked his fingers forward. The sphere shot off with a low hiss and splashed against a distant rock, scattering into droplets that glittered before fading into mist.

A faint hum filled the air, followed by the familiar chime in his head.

[New Class Unlocked: Rain Sorcerer Lv. 1]

Bonus per Level: +3 INT, +3 WIS, +3 DEX.

Skill Acquired: [Splash Lv. 1]

Condenses ambient moisture into controllable water mass. Can project in short bursts or continuous streams. Power scales with environmental humidity and Intelligence. Cost: 30 per second or cast.

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