The campfire crackled low beneath the starlit sky, its orange light painting faint halos against the stones. Most of the group had already settled, Kharnek was snoring like a thunderstorm, Darnell had taken first watch near the wagon, and Lord Torvares was asleep inside his tent, his breathing slow and steady.

Ludger, as usual, remained awake, sitting on a rock with a faint blue glow reflecting in his eyes as he polished his armguards. The night air was still… until he caught a faint disturbance behind him.

A shift of weight. A slow exhale someone tried to hold. He didn’t even turn around.

With a thought, the soil behind him softened,  the ground flowing like syrup.

“—Kyaah!”

A startled yelp cut through the quiet, followed by the squelch of boots sinking into the earth. Ludger finally looked back to see Kaela, half-submerged in the ground, glaring at him in indignation as the quicksand sucked at her ankles.

“Really?” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Is that how you greet people?”

“You’re not people,” Ludger replied flatly. “You’re the most suspicious person here, and you were holding your breath like a thief.”

Before she could retort, the air shimmered faintly around her, her mana stirring. A small gust formed beneath her, and she rose into the air, floating just above the quicksand with her usual grin.

“Better?” she teased.

“Not really,” Ludger said, crossing his arms. “You just look like a flying headache now.”

Kaela twirled midair, smug. “Relax, I was just trying to scare you a bit.”

Ludger gave her a deadpan stare. “Unless you can copy my mother’s aura, you won’t scare me. She can make grown men cry without saying a word. It is called emotional damage.”

Kaela pouted theatrically. “Hmph. I’ll take that as a challenge.”

“Don’t,” Ludger warned. “She’d end you.”

For a moment, the wind mage floated there in silence, studying him. Then her voice softened slightly, though the grin didn’t vanish entirely.

“Can I ask something?” she said. “Why’d you even let me come with you so easily? You don’t trust me, that’s obvious.”

Ludger tilted his head, as if considering whether to bother answering. “Because you’re useful,” he said at last. “Your wind magic can track people. Maurien’s somewhere ahead of us, and I’d rather not waste a week wandering blind. Once you find him, I will say: you outlived your usefulness.”

Her grin faltered into something more genuine. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Ludger said simply. “You’re not here because I like you. You’re here because you can find people I can’t.”

Kaela blinked, then gave a dry little laugh. “Pragmatic as ever. You know, most people would at least pretend it’s because they enjoy my company.”

“I already have one loud northerner and a tired guard captain,” Ludger said, smirking faintly. “That’s enough company for a lifetime.”

She hovered a moment longer, then sighed dramatically. “You’re something else.”

“Good,” he said, standing up and snapping his fingers, the ground solidifying again beneath her.

She landed lightly, brushing off her boots, then gave him one last sidelong glance. “You really don’t scare easy, huh?”

Ludger shrugged. “You have met my mother.”

Kaela snorted, turning away toward her tent. “Not planning to.. meet her often”

“Wise,” Ludger murmured, sitting back down beside the fire.

And as the flames crackled softly, the faint sound of wind followed her into the dark, playful, restless, and as unpredictable as the woman herself.

Kaela sat down cross-legged across the fire from him, poking a twig into the coals until they flared. The playful tone she usually carried had dimmed a little, replaced with the curiosity of someone who finally remembered she was supposed to be part of a mission.

“So,” she said, tracing lazy circles in the dirt, “how are we going to find Maurien, anyway? I can track a person across a province, sure, but I can’t exactly spread my magic over the entire Empire. Even I have limits.”

Ludger looked up from his notes, unimpressed. “You don’t say.”

She ignored the jab and leaned forward. “And while we’re at it, what’s his role supposed to be? You dragged me along, but so far, you’re giving off that ‘I already have a plan, don’t ask’ energy.”

Ludger frowned faintly, tapping his pencil against the parchment. “Didn’t you hear the conversation I had with my father before we left?”

Kaela blinked, then gave a sheepish grin. “Not all of it. The wind shifted directions halfway through, and, well… missed a few lines.”

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You really lack training.”

“I never claimed to be perfect with wind magic,” she said, pouting a little. “Besides, it’s not like eavesdropping’s an official discipline.”

“For you, it’s a lifestyle,” Ludger muttered.

She gave him a smug look. “Guilty.”

He exhaled and sat back, the firelight flickering across his face. “Fine. I’ll explain once. Maurien’s been investigating the Velis League, specifically, their trade links with Imperial nobles. There are questions that need answers. The kind that can’t be written in letters or trusted to couriers.”

Kaela raised an eyebrow. “So we’re not just meeting him, we’re digging.”

“Indeed,” Ludger said. “Maurien’s the only one with direct experience dealing with them. He’s been off the grid for months. If we find the culprits, we get clarity. If we don’t…” He trailed off, his gaze fixed on the dark road beyond the campfire. “Then we find whoever made those people disappear.”

Kaela studied him for a moment, then gave a slow nod. “And here I thought this trip was just about politics.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close. “Politics and corpses usually travel together.”

She shivered, half from the chill breeze, half from his tone. “You know, for an eleven-year-old, you talk like someone who’s seen too many bad endings.”

He looked at her flatly. “You’ve got no idea.”

The fire popped, sending sparks drifting upward into the night sky. For a while, neither of them said anything more, the silence filled only by the wind Kaela claimed to command, and Ludger’s quiet certainty that this mission would be far more dangerous than any of them realized yet.

Ludger sat back, the fire’s glow flickering in his eyes as he considered her last question.

He could tell her everything, Maurien’s methods, the suspected nobles, the Velis League’s potential involvement in the draught smuggling, all the threads that tied this mission together. But that would be reckless. Kaela was useful, but she was also unpredictable.

He’d already learned that trusting the wrong person could cost more than a battle, it could destroy entire alliances. Still, there was a practical side to calculated risk. If she did leak information, he’d know exactly where the breach came from. And if she didn’t… well, then he could stop wasting time doubting her.

He leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing in thought. Better to gamble small now than wonder later.

After a moment’s silence, he finally said, “Maurien will find us first. Or at least, he’ll try.”

Kaela raised an eyebrow. “And if he doesn’t?”

Ludger looked up at the night sky, then pointed his hand upward. “Then I’ll make him find us.”

A deep pulse of mana rippled through the air. A heartbeat later, a massive Splash burst upward from his palm, arcing high into the sky like a glimmering beacon before falling in the distance with a sound like distant thunder.

Kaela flinched slightly, her cloak rippling from the force of the mana discharge. “You’ve been doing that every few hours since we left,” she said, half annoyed, half curious. “What is that supposed to do?”

Ludger didn’t answer immediately. He just stared into the dark horizon, then allowed a small, familiar smirk to tug at the corner of his mouth.

“…You’ll see,” he said.

Kaela groaned, throwing her arms up. “Gods, I swear those smirks are going to haunt me in my sleep. How do people get used to them?”

“Practice,” Ludger said dryly, standing up and brushing the dirt off his cloak.

She shot him a look. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

“I hear that often,” he replied.

Kaela rolled her eyes, but beneath the exasperation, a faint grin tugged at her lips. “Fine, mister mysterious. Keep your secrets. But if I find out that ‘water trick’ is just you playing with your magic out of boredom, I’m going to throw you into a lake myself.”

Ludger glanced sideways at her, faint amusement flickering behind his calm tone. “Then I’ll at least be where I belong.”

The wind stirred again, brushing past the fire as if echoing his quiet confidence. And though Kaela muttered something under her breath about smug prodigies, she couldn’t quite hide the curiosity glinting in her eyes, wondering what that falling water signal really meant, and what kind of mage could afford to play chess against the night itself.

By the next morning, Ludger’s strange routine had turned into something of a spectacle.

Every few miles, the quiet rhythm of the journey was interrupted by the muffled sound of rushing water, a wet whumph as another shimmering sphere shot out from the carriage window and vanished into the horizon like a liquid comet.

No one said anything at first. Kharnek just grunted every time it happened, Kaela smirked knowingly, and Darnell kept muttering about how much he’d prefer not to drown inside a moving wagon. But by the sixth or seventh launch before noon, even Lord Torvares’s patience began to wear thin.

He finally exhaled, rubbing his temples. “Ludger,” he said evenly, “I’ll ask only once. What exactly are you training for? Flooding the Empire?”

Ludger, still half leaning out the window, flicked his wrist, another water orb forming, glowing faintly with condensed mana before he released it into the air. “Training,” he said simply.

Torvares’s eyebrow twitched. “Training for what

?”

“To make Maurien find us.”

That earned him a long, measured stare from everyone in the carriage. Kharnek chuckled quietly. Kaela covered a laugh with her hand. Torvares just sighed, leaning back. “You and that old mage are going to be the death of my nerves.”

“Then he’ll come to your funeral too,” Ludger said flatly, settling back into his seat.

Kaela snorted. “He’s got an answer for everything.”

The rest of the day continued like that, water spheres flying from the carriage at regular intervals, the faint mist cooling the summer air around them. Each pulse of mana sharpened Ludger’s control, refining the rhythm between his body and the flow of external water. He could feel his class adapting, his mana moving faster, smoother, responding to his intent before he consciously shaped it.

By sunset, the air around him felt charged. His Rain Sorcerer class had reached a new threshold, a silent chime echoing in his mind as the system etched glowing blue text across his vision.

[Rain Sorcerer Lv. 10]

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

Skills:

• [Splash Lv. 15] – Condense and launch high-pressure water projectiles. Precision and impact scale with Intelligence.
• [Mist Shroud Lv. 11] – Create a localized mist field that obscures vision and masks mana signatures.
• [Cumulonimbus Lv. 1] – Summon a condensed stormfront infused with the caster’s mana. Generates sustained rainfall. Mana cost scales with duration and intensity. The cost equals the level of the skill multiplied by ten and it can decreased and increased according to the caster’s will.

The mana in his body hummed, heavy but alive. The new skill’s presence felt different from the rest, vast and atmospheric, like the sky itself answering a call.

Ludger sat quietly for a while, watching the faint ripples of residual moisture gather around his hands. “…Cumulonimbus,” he muttered. “A storm I can control.”

Kaela leaned over curiously. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” he said, smirking faintly as he looked back out the window. “Just weather.”

She narrowed her eyes. “That smirk again… I swear one day I’m going to learn what goes through your head when you make that face.”

“Wouldn’t recommend it,” Ludger replied. “It’s loud in there.”

Torvares gave an exasperated sigh from across the carriage. “Remind me why I agreed to travel with a child prodigy who treats the sky like a toy.”

“Because it works,” Ludger said simply, as another faint boom of water echoed somewhere in the distance.

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