The next few days slipped comfortably back into routine.

Arslan reclaimed his seat as Guildmaster as if he’d never left, already barking orders by the second morning. Yvar was at his side, quill in hand, running through reports and supply ledgers that had piled up over the past six months.

The guild came alive again with its usual rhythm, people sparring in the courtyard, and dispatches leaving through the front gates bound for nearby towns. The Lionsguard was back to business.

Most of the senior members took a few well-earned days off before preparing for their next rotation into the Frost Labyrinth, chasing froststeel quotas as always. Viola and Luna left two days later for the Torvares estate, their carriage disappearing south along the road at sunrise. Viola had lingered for a while before leaving, watching the guild work, the patrols march out, and Ludger hauling stone in the distance, before muttering something about “not being shown up by a eleven-year-old again.”

As for Ludger, rest wasn’t really in his vocabulary.

He spent his days repairing the streets of Lionfang, reshaping broken cobbles, and reinforcing the old stone paths with condensed earth mana. When that was done, he extended the same work to the dirt road leading to the Frost Labyrinth, smoothing ruts and setting small drainage channels. The travel teams would move faster now, and safer.

Naturally, he couldn’t do any of it in peace.

“Vice Guildmaster! Is it true the bridge pillars were coral and stone fused together?”

“Did you really make a stone cannonball that exploded?”

“Were the sahuagins actually that fast underwater?”

Ludger’s sighs got heavier with each question, but his audience never shrank.

The usual suspects followed him around like a pack of curious pups, Derrin, the spear user, twirling his weapon while listening intently; Mira, the hunter, taking mental, notes about formation spacing; Taron, the alchemist and rune enthusiast, reading the book Ludger brought back from the south; Rhea, the brawler, occasionally shadowboxing mid-conversation as she imagined a sahuagin; and Callen, the water mage, asking far too many questions about the sahuagins’ water attacks.

“It was a construction project, not an adventure,” Ludger muttered at one point while shaping a section of road. “You’d think I fought dungeon guardians down there.”

Rhea grinned. “Yeah, but you kinda did fight a sea guardian, didn’t you?”

“That thing didn’t even blink at us,” Ludger replied. “I wouldn’t call that a fight.”

Taron, still reading his book, didn’t look up. “Still counts as research material.”

Ludger glanced skyward, silently questioning his life choices.

Despite the interruptions, he didn’t really mind. Seeing the recruits energized, training, and eager to learn meant the guild was growing stronger, even if it meant his daily work took twice as long.

By the end of the week, Lionfang looked livelier than it had in months. The walls gleamed under new mineral polish, the repaired road stretched clean toward the northern hills, and laughter echoed through the marketplace again.

Routine had returned,  the kind of quiet, steady life that always came before the next storm.

As Lionfang settled back into its familiar pace, Ludger finally found a quiet morning to think ahead. The air was cool, the streets freshly repaired, and the guild had returned to its usual rhythm, requests, patrols, and paperwork.

He leaned against the stone railing overlooking the main square, watching merchants unload carts, recruits train, and Arslan argue with Yvar about expense reports. His mind, however, was elsewhere.

His next step was clear. He needed to copy the Healing Touch manual. The one he’d written months ago, before the bridge project,  the same set of notes that had helped his mother master the spell. Lord Torvares had been waiting for that text. They’d talked about it half a year ago,  the old noble wanted to organize Lionfang’s healers squad as intelligence agents that would travel the empire gathering intel from them while working as traveling healers.

Now that the southern work was complete, it was time to follow through. He headed home, mind already running through the process of replication: new parchment… Only to find Elaine sitting by the window, stitching one of Elle’s clothes.

“Hey, Mom,” Ludger said. “Do you still have that notebook? The Healing Touch one?”

She didn’t look up from her work. “No. Luna asked to borrow it before she left with Viola.”

Ludger paused, blinking. “She did?”

Elaine nodded. “She said Lord Torvares would want to see it,  something about organizing a new set of healers and apothecaries for their next plans.”

He exhaled through his nose and crossed his arms, eyes narrowing slightly. “Of course she did.”

His mother smirked, sensing his tone. “You sound disappointed.”

“Not disappointed,” he said slowly, “just… curious.”

Elaine finally looked up at him, amused. “About what?”

“Whether that old man’s helping me or just stealing work off my plate again.”

That earned her quiet laughter. “Maybe both. You know how he operates.”

Ludger sighed and leaned against the doorframe, staring out at the sunlight spilling across the courtyard. “Figures. Can’t even complain about it, it’s for the nest.”

He wasn’t sure if Lord Torvares had done it out of genuine support or just to accelerate his own plans, but either way, the result was the same: his Healing Touch notes were already in the hands of people who’d know how to use them. And if he was honest, that was fine by him. Less paperwork.

Still, he couldn’t help but smirk faintly. “Guess I owe him one.”

Elaine hummed. “You could always write him a thank-you note.”

“Or,” Ludger said, turning to leave, “I could just make sure his next dinner party gets three unexpected guests.”

His mother chuckled softly as he walked away, half exasperated, half proud, while Ludger muttered under his breath about how even when he tried to relax, someone always managed to stay three steps ahead of him.

A few days later, while sorting through the latest guild reports, Ludger caught a flicker of blue light in the corner of his vision.

[Dissection of Knowledge + 50 XP]

He blinked once, frowning. The skill had only one way to level, someone somewhere was actively analyzing, testing, or expanding upon his written work. So, the old man Torvares had wasted no time.

Ludger leaned back in his chair, letting the paper he’d been reading fall onto the desk. “Figures,” he muttered. “Didn’t even take him a week.”

It wasn’t hard to piece things together. Viola had probably told her grandfather everything, about the bridge project, the labyrinth, the Healing Touch manual, and how Ludger had practically worked himself to exhaustion during those months. The old man wasn’t the type to sit idle after hearing that. He was already setting things in motion.

‘He’s probably distributing copies through the Torvares recruits,’ Ludger thought. ‘Building the knowledge web we talked about before I could even breathe.’

He couldn’t even be annoyed about it, it was efficient, thorough, and predictable. Exactly how Lord Torvares operated. Still, the realization carried another layer to it.

Employing intelligence agents in disguise as healers, recorders, or apothecaries… that could get ugly fast.

If the Empire caught wind of it, if they found out those “healers” were gathering strategic data on the empire under the guild banner, it wouldn’t end well for anyone. Not for the Lionsguard, and definitely not for him.

Which made sense. Maybe that’s why Torvares had taken the manual personally. Maybe he wanted to handle that entire network himself, so if the plan went south, he would take the blame. Not Ludger. Not the guild.

Ludger tapped his fingers against the desk, lips curving into a faint, thoughtful smirk. “You really don’t miss a step, old man.”

He glanced at the faint blue icon of his skill progress still hovering in the corner of his sight. The connection between them, the teacher’s notes, the noble’s influence, the network forming in the shadows, was already producing results. All that from a single notebook.

Ludger leaned forward again, pushing the reports aside. “Guess I’ll have to keep writing, then.”

If Torvares wanted to turn his work into something bigger, Ludger would at least make sure the foundation was solid enough not to collapse under politics.

Later that night, when the guild had quieted down and only the faint crackle of the lamplight filled his office, Ludger sat behind his desk, tapping a quill against the edge of a blank page.

His eyes drifted toward the neat stack of finished documents on one side — reports, diagrams, and now, the faint glow of the system’s feedback still hovering above one of them. Dissection of Knowledge. It had grown stronger again that morning. Another contribution, another ripple of work being done elsewhere because of him.

That thought made him wonder — what else could he teach through writing?

Maybe… Overdrive.

It was a simple enough skill in principle — everyone had seen it, felt it, or even triggered it once by instinct. The channeling of raw mana through the body’s core to temporarily exceed one’s limits. Basic, dangerous, and almost impossible to standardize.

He leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowing in thought. Simple, yes. But Overdrive wasn’t the same for everyone.

He pictured it. The flashes burned clearly in his memory ,  Arslan’s Overdrive, burning bright like a roaring flame, the ground around him scorched black from the heat of his mana. Then Viola’s, solid and unwavering, like a condensed wall of earth holding back a storm.

Different elements. Different forms.

He understood Viola’s — she’d trained with Gaius, shaped her magic through earth mana, learned to root herself to the ground and endure. Her Overdrive reflected that perfectly.

But his father’s… that was strange. Arslan was no mage. His mana affinity leaned toward raw power and speed not flame. The fire could’ve been a symbol of his fighting will, or something deeper, maybe a side effect of an elemental alignment he’d never mentioned.

Or maybe Overdrive changed shape based on how one perceived their own strength.

Ludger rubbed his thumb against his chin, eyes half-lidded. “Was that his natural manifestation… or did something affect it?”

The question itched at him. He could test it, theoretically. He picked up his quill again and began writing, not for others this time, but for himself.

If Overdrive really responded to perception, then teaching it through written theory might not give a fixed result. It might mirror whoever studied it.

To test that, he needed control variables. He reached for a clean set of pages and began outlining three small, harmless manuals,  not for Overdrive itself, but for elemental triggers that would reveal how elemental affinities worked.

[Manual Drafts]

Create Water

Tinder

Dust

Cold Wind

Three simple spells. Low risk. Each one tied to an elemental base, water, fire, and earth.

If he could track how Overdrive responded after cycling through those mana types, he’d know whether the variation came from elemental training, mental imagery… or something deeper, tied to spirit or lineage. He smirked faintly as he finished the last header and tapped the page.

“Let’s see what you really are, old man.”

The next morning, Arslan returned to the guild just after sunrise, brushing dust from his coat as he stepped inside. The place was already awake, recruits running drills in the yard,  but one thing stood out immediately.

No sign of Ludger.

That in itself wasn’t unusual; the boy had a habit of being up early, out working somewhere before most people even found their boots. But when Elaine arrived later, her expression told a different story.

“Arslan,” she said flatly, “did Ludger come home last night?”

He blinked. “Didn’t he?”

Her silence answered the question for him. She crossed her arms, clearly unimpressed. “You know how I feel about him wandering off without a word.”

Arslan raised a hand defensively. “He’s eleven. It’s normal for boys his age to want time to themselves.”

Elaine arched an eyebrow. “You mean your son, who spends his ‘alone time’ building coral bridges and writing magic manuals?”

He hesitated. “…Right. Point taken.”

By the time they found him, Ludger was still in the guild’s study hall, slouched over a desk littered with parchment and ink bottles. Four thick stacks of paper sat neatly in front of him, labeled in careful handwriting. It was clear that he didn’t sleep even a bit.

His father pinched the bridge of his nose. “You didn’t sleep, did you?”

Ludger looked up, eyes slightly red but otherwise calm. “Not much. Had an idea. Wanted to test it before it went cold.”

Elaine sighed in the background. Arslan, meanwhile, stared at the manuals like they were evidence of some larger cosmic problem.

“This is what you do when you want to ‘be alone’?” he asked. “Write spell manuals overnight?”

“Four,” Ludger corrected helpfully.

Arslan exhaled slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Is this… how teenage boys act now? When I was that age, I was hitting on girls and swinging my sword.”

“You still do that,” Elaine muttered, her cold aura slightly manifesting.

Ludger pushed the top manual toward him. “Good. Then you’ll appreciate this. I need you to read them, each one,  and try to cast the spells.”

Arslan blinked. “Ludger, I’m not a mage.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ludger said, dead serious. “It’s for the sake of science.”

Elaine stifled a laugh behind her hand.

Arslan looked between them, his son’s intense stare, his wife’s amusement, and realized resistance was futile. He took the first manual, flipping it open with the kind of care usually reserved for live explosives.

“So what happens if I blow up the guild?”

“Then I’ll know,” Ludger said without missing a beat.

Arslan stared at him for a long moment. “…You get that from your mother.”

Elaine smiled sweetly. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

With a resigned sigh, the Guildmaster of the Lionsguard prepared to conduct an “experiment” that would, by all appearances, involve his son, four mysterious spell manuals, and the very real possibility of setting the main hall on fire, all in the name of science.

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