A sculpture stood tall in the center of the yard, the stone catching the morning light like polished marble. It depicted a female figure, wrapped in a flowing cloak sculpted so precisely it looked like real fabric caught in a gust of wind. The details were absurdly intricate, every fold, every ripple, every strand of motion frozen in perfect harmony with the invisible current around her.

The figure was suspended mid-air, angled forward as if she were soaring through a storm. In each of her hands, she held a curved dagger, sharp, elegant, deadly. Her hair whipped behind her, strands carved with such delicate precision they almost seemed to shift when one blinked.

Her face was half-hidden beneath the hood, leaving only a sliver of her jawline and one intense eye visible. Even without the full expression, one could imagine it: Focused. Fearless. Unstoppable. The kids circled it with wide eyes and hushed voices.

“Woah…”

“She looks so cool…”

“Is she flying?”

“She has knives! TWO knives!”

“She looks like a hero in a storybook!”

“She looks like she’s cutting down monsters in a thunderstorm!”

“That’s so badass!”

Kaela’s entire face went beet red.

Her pupils shrank. Her mouth twitched. Her soul left her body and considered never coming back.

Renvar blinked beside her, staring between the sculpture and Kaela. “…Is that… you?”

Kaela didn’t answer. She was too busy vibrating in place, torn between pride, embarrassment, and the overwhelming urge to bury herself underground.

Then she whipped her head around and bellowed:

“LUDGER!”

Her voice cracked across the courtyard like thunder. Ludger, who had been pretending not to watch from the doorway, paused mid-sip of his tea. Kaela stomped toward him, pointing furiously at the sculpture.

“What the hell is that?! Why—WHY would you make something like THAT of ME?!” she screeched, face blazing red.

The kids watched, confused by her reaction. Kaela jabbed a finger at her own mortified reflection in stone.

“THIS—this is NOT a sculpture for kids to admire! This is the kind of sculpture adults use to swoon over my beauty and charm, you absolute gremlin! NOT—NOT—some heroic mommy-of-the-year idol they look up to!”

The kids gasped.

“Kaela’s a hero?”

“She hunts kidnappers!”

“She’s so cool!”

“I wanna be like her!”

“She fights like the wind lady!”

Kaela made a sound halfway between a scream and a whine. Ludger finally set his tea down and answered with the faintest smirk.

“You seemed like a good role model.”

Kaela died inside. The kids cheered. The sculpture stood proudly. And Ludger had never been more satisfied with his work.

The sculpture had taken Ludger barely an hour to complete—simple, single-tone stone with no pigments, no secondary materials, and far less emotional complexity than the Violette monument. But even so, the effects were absurdly strong for something carved that quickly.

And the kids noticed. They didn’t know the System’s inner workings, but they weren’t stupid. Within minutes of staring at the sculpture, several kids started summoning steadier water spheres, keeping their mana from flickering, or writing cleaner letters with improved hand control.

They could feel it. Their mana surged faster. Their bodies felt lighter. Their movements sharpened. Even Kaela, in the middle of her mortified rage, stopped dead for half a second as her mana flow subtly quickened.

Renvar blinked at his own fingers, where tiny threads of wind mana curled more responsively than before. Meanwhile, Ludger checked the System prompt casually and read the completed details.

[Object Created: Silent Gale Huntress Effigy]

Grade: Rare

Range: 900 meters

Duration: 10 hours

Effects:

— +10% Magic Power to all individuals who behold the effigy.

— +10% Dexterity, improving balance, fine movement, and combat precision.

— +50% Mana Regeneration Rate, allowing faster recovery for spellcasters and elemental users.

— Stance of the Gale: Observers gain heightened ability to control subtle shifts in body weight, improving dodges, footwork, and evasion.

— Wind-Echo Memory: Those with wind affinity experience a temporary increase in responsiveness and clarity when channeling air-aligned mana.

“I—I can cast clearer water now!”

“Look! My fingers don’t shake anymore!”

“My mana came back so fast, did you see that?!”

Kaela’s blush deepened as the compliments kept raining.

“She looks like she’s protecting the town!”

“She looks like someone who saves kidnapped people!”

“She’s so awesome!”

“I wanna be like her when I grow up!”

Kaela’s whole body trembled.

“LUDGER!” she shrieked again. “I TOLD YOU—THIS IS NOT FOR CHILDREN TO IDOLIZE!!”

Ludger crossed his arms and answered with a straight face that only made her angrier.

“Looks like they already do.”

Kaela nearly exploded.

Renvar quietly leaned toward the sculpture again, whispering, “This thing makes me feel like I can sprint around the world…”

“Don’t stand too close,” Ludger said. “You’ll get ideas again.”

Kaela groaned into her hands. The kids kept admiring their new “mysterious wind heroine.” And Ludger, satisfied with both the buffs and the chaos he caused, made a mental note:

Making instructor-grade sculptures might become a habit.

Kaela’s rant went on long enough that several kids quietly drifted away, sensing the growing danger in her tone. She circled the sculpture like a storm given human form, hands flailing, cloak whipping behind her, every step echoing with indignation.

“This is absurd! Completely absurd! Why would you carve this of me? Why am I flying?! Why do I look like some heroic savior of the realm? I’m supposed to be charming and beautiful, not—NOT—a wholesome bedtime story hero!”

Ludger didn’t blink.

“I’m not carving anything inappropriate,” he said calmly, adjusting the collar of his shirt. “I don’t do NSFW commissions.”

Kaela stopped dead, face contorting. “I DIDN’T ASK FOR THAT! I asked for something dignified, beautiful, mature, something that adults would admire!”

“You got a sculpture,” Ludger replied, utterly unbothered. “That’s the deal.”

Kaela growled. “You’re infuriating.”

“You say that every morning.”

“You make me want to hit something!”

“You also say that every morning.”

She groaned into her hands, stomping in a small circle before finally throwing her arms up in defeat. The kids continued praising the sculpture, which only made her blush harder.

Eventually, she muttered, “Fine. Whatever. But one day, I want a sculpture that makes adults weak in the knees, not kids calling me ‘cool big sister with knives.’”

“We’ll see,” Ludger said again in the same tone he used when dismissing Renvar’s bad ideas.

Kaela strangled the air, gave up, and stormed off to lecture Renvar about the importance of not getting launched like a rag doll during sparring. Her voice echoed across the courtyard in increasingly colorful threats. Meanwhile, Ludger assessed his next task.

The capital had been begging for more figurines, Fendrel’s letters had practically been shaking with excitement and panic. The “Lionsguard Collection,” as the merchants called it, was selling out faster than he could produce them. Ludger decided to begin carving smaller versions of the Kaela effigy, maybe mix in a Maurien or Gaius figurine next. Something simple to start, something that wouldn’t take three days of emotional refinement like the Violette monument. That was when Yvar rushed over, spectacles sliding down his nose, face pale with stress.

“Vice guildmaster,” he said, slightly breathless, “Guildmaster Arslan requests your presence. Immediately. Something urgent.”

Ludger nodded once. “Got it.”

He turned and left the courtyard behind, Renvar wobbling during handstand drills Kaela forced him into, kids practicing Splash and Create Water under the new sculpture’s buffs, the Silent Gale Huntress Effigy quietly influencing mana flows around the yard.

As he walked toward Arslan’s office, Ludger’s mind automatically drifted toward planning. The second squad was doing well helping with the younger kids, but he needed to take their training further soon. Overdrive fundamentals, tactical movement drills, maybe some runic basics for the mages… and…

He stopped planning the moment he pushed open Arslan’s office door. His father wasn’t reading.  He wasn’t scribbling on parchment. He wasn’t leaning back like the world’s problems were manageable.

Arslan sat rigid, arms crossed tightly, eyes locked on the window with a hardened expression Ludger rarely saw. Serious. Focused. Concerned.

Trouble, real trouble.

“What happened?” Ludger asked immediately.

Arslan looked at him, no hesitation, no buildup, no easing into it.

“Pirates,” he said.

The word dropped like a stone, heavy and cold. And Ludger immediately knew this was not going to be a small problem.

Ludger blinked once, slowly, as the word pirates sank in. Then he leaned a hip against the desk and crossed his arms.

“Pirates,” he repeated. “We live in the middle of the continent. Surrounded by fields. With not even a lake big enough to drown a noble in. Why exactly are pirates our problem?”

Arslan’s lips thinned, the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before it vanished. “They aren’t directly our problem. Not yet. But they’ve become a major problem for the Ironhand Syndicate.”

That name made Ludger straighten slightly.

The Ironhand Syndicate, the southern engineer guild, known for runic engines, cannons, automaton frames, and ships reinforced with more metal than common sense. Allies to Lucius Hakuen… who in turn was an ally by way of Viola’s connections. The Lionsguard had benefitted from them indirectly more than once and they worked together to build the bridge in the south.

“So what happened?” Ludger asked.

Arslan tapped the letter in his hands, the wax seal already broken. “Their shipments out of the Runic Golems Labyrinth keep getting intercepted. Pirates are attacking their supply routes. Regularly. Aggressively. Rathen reports they’ve lost several ships and more than a few people.”

Ludger’s jaw tightened. “That’s bad. If Ironhand starts losing trade capacity, we’re next in line to suffer.”

“Indeed,” Arslan said. “And politically speaking, they’re important allies. Ignoring this would damage our relationship.”

Ludger rubbed his chin, thinking through the implications. “Still… Ironhand isn’t weak. Their ships are basically half fortress, half workshop. Their engineers carry more explosives than most adventurers. How do… pirates… overwhelm them?”

“They shouldn’t,” Arslan agreed with a grim nod. “Not unless the pirates are something more.”

He flipped the letter open so Ludger could see the hastily written script. Rathen’s handwriting was sharp, decisive, punched into the parchment with more pressure than necessary, a man writing while frustrated and probably short a few engineers.

The details were bad. Coordinated attacks. Fog-assisted ambushes. Ships sinking within minutes. Boarding crews moving with trained precision. Weapons with unfamiliar markings. A disturbing pattern of survivors reporting the same thing:“They moved like soldiers.”

Ludger’s brows dipped. “…Those are not regular pirates.”

“No,” Arslan said, leaning back in his chair. “They aren’t.”

He exhaled slowly, eyes drifting toward the window as if measuring the coming storm.

“Rathen suspects they’re affiliated with an underworld guild.”

That alone was bad. But Arslan’s expression hadn’t reached its final severity yet. There was more.

“A large one?” Ludger asked quietly.

Arslan closed his eyes for the briefest moment before saying it.

“International.”

The air stilled. Ludger felt his mind begin stitching threads together, a pattern he didn’t like at all. The Iron Moth Brotherhood. The cloaked trainer. The over-equipped bandit nests. The nobles manipulating guilds from the shadows. The berserker draughts appearing across regions. A growing pressure around Lionfang and Torvares. Now… pirates with organization and military discipline?

“Perfect,” Ludger muttered, tone flat. “Because obviously we needed maritime enemies now.”

Arslan gave a humorless chuckle. “There was a time when your sarcasm was aimed only at chores.”

“There was a time when our biggest problem was frost skeletons,” Ludger countered.

“Those were simpler days,” Arslan admitted.

Silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken calculations. An international underworld guild meant money, manpower, and influence across borders. It meant coordination on levels far beyond simple smuggling rings. It meant shared intelligence. It meant someone with enough vision, and resources, to destabilize multiple territories at once.

And for some reason…

Their shadow kept brushing against the Lionsguard.

Ludger took a breath and finally asked, “…So what do we do?”

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