The storm screamed. The waves bucked. The next volley from the flagship began to glow.

Ludger didn’t wait. He lifted his hand and slashed his mana into the air, writing with sharp, blinding strokes that cut through the storm like sparks on steel.

Wind Overdrive.

Wind Overdrive.

Wind Overdrive.

Three phrases, each heavy enough to drain a huge chunk of his reserves. The runes crackled violently, unstable from the sheer density behind them, then shot off like bolts of lightning toward the others.

Kaela was the first to react. She stumbled backward a half-step when the spell struck her, not physically, but through mana. The air around her warped, tightening like a spiraling cyclone.

“What the—?!” she hissed as her hair whipped upward.

Renvar caught the second one and yelped as it blasted through him. “H-HOT! It’s hot—why is mana wind hot?!”

Maurien closed his eyes as the third rune slammed into him. His breathing steadied instantly, and a deep, razor-sharp calm settled over his features.

All three felt it at once: A surge of speed. A sharpening of movement. A clarity in airflow that made the storm feel slow.

Enhanced coordination. Amplified reflexes. Mana pathways opened wide. Wind Overdrive… multiplied their control over wind.

Kaela exhaled, eyes wide. “This… this is insane. This isn’t just mana—this is—this is like the wind is listening to me, much more than usual.”

Renvar shook his arms violently. “I feel like I’m gonna explode! In a good way! Maybe!”

Maurien gave a curt nod. “This will significantly alter the battle.”

Ludger didn’t waste a second.

“It won’t last long,” he warned, voice cutting through the storm. “A few minutes at best. Enough for one push.”

He pointed at the approaching silhouettes in the storm, the pirate ships forcing their way through the waves.

“Use the tide. Use the storm. Let it fling you toward them. Create chaos. Take out their casters, their cannons, their sails, anything that slows them.”

Kaela’s grin snapped back into place, feral and bright. Maurien’s eyes gleamed with lethal precision. Renvar’s knees were shaking, but for once it wasn’t fear, it was energy.

Ludger nodded once.

“Go.”

Then he turned, stepped onto the railing, and jumped. The wind, thick and violent, caught him immediately. But Ludger didn’t fall, he bent it. Compressed it. Turned it into a platform beneath his feet as he kicked off the air itself.

BOOM—!!

A shockwave burst outward as he launched himself forward, faster than the wind howling around him. The waves he landed on bucked and split beneath the impact, storm-water exploding upward before he used the force to leap again.

Wind propulsion. Compressed bursts. Each step sending him farther, faster. Kaela watched him streak across the ocean like a missile.

“…Show-off,” she muttered, readying her knives.

Renvar swallowed. “He just—he just ran across the ocean!”

Maurien stepped up onto the railing beside them.

“Move,” he said simply.

Then the three of them followed, Kaela diving into the storm winds like a hawk, Renvar ricocheting across the waves with uncontrolled excitement, Maurien guiding the air around him like a man walking through familiar halls.

The Tidebreaker stayed behind. The fleet held formation. And the four of them became streaks of motion cutting across the raging sea, headed directly for the pirate ships forcing the storm upon them.

Kaela noticed it first, a sharp pulse running up her spine and branching through her arms as the Wind Overdrive settled into her veins. Her steps on the water shifted from impact to glide, her knives humming with mana so sharp they felt weightless. The storm winds didn’t buffet her, they curled around her like trained beasts finally recognizing their master. She tilted her body into a dive and the wind simply moved aside, yielding to her momentum. Her jaw clenched slightly as realization dawned.

So this was what Ludger had been doing those three days, writing glowing weird words into the air, drawing runes she’d never seen, throwing pebbles into the ocean like a lunatic. She thought he was wasting time. She thought he was bored. But the truth hit her like a spear.

He had forged an entirely new method of channeling mana.

A technique powerful enough to make the storm feel slow and obedient.

“Damn you, Ludger…” she muttered under her breath as she skimmed across the waves, “you overengineered brat.”

Renvar’s reaction, as expected, was louder, though no less shocked. His limbs filled with a surge of energy so intense he nearly lost control of his footing. His usual Overdrive was wild, raw, and hot; it burned through his body like a raging bonfire. But Ludger’s version was clean. Refined. Structured. Every gust of wind he triggered responded with twice the speed and ten times the precision.

He didn’t just move fast, his whole body felt weightless. Each step ricocheted him across the waves like he’d turned into a living arrow, his acceleration spiking so hard his vision blurred at the edges. He wanted to scream. Not out of fear, but because he finally understood.

Ludger had shattered every rule Renvar knew about wind manipulation, and replaced them with something far more efficient, far more dangerous. His breath hitched, excitement and anxiety tangling in his chest.

Maurien, meanwhile, processed the surge in silence. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t lose balance. But inside, every instinct he had was sharpening to a razor-fine point. The world around him, chaotic as it was, reorganized into something almost artistic, gusts, pressure changes, the drag of the storm winds, the rhythm of the waves… all of it aligned into perfect clarity.

The storm became a blueprint. He didn’t feel twice as fast, he felt synced. Harmonized like the wind had been waiting years for someone to command it properly. And that terrified him more than any pirate ship ever could.

This wasn’t talent. This wasn’t luck. Ludger had crafted a support effect so deep it bordered on precision warfare. Three days of writing strange runes. Three days of staring at the horizon like a man searching for something only he could see. Maurien whispered under his breath, voice low, almost reverent:

“…he wasn’t training a spell.

He was crafting a technique for us.”

It hit him fully then, why Ludger had been so quiet those nights, why he pushed himself until sunrise, why he didn’t explain a single thing. Ludger had prepared the battlefield before the pirates even sailed.

Ludger kicked off the air as if it were solid stone, and the storm itself bent around him.

A thin, invisible barrier, nothing more than overcompressed wind mana hugging tight to his skin, formed on instinct. It wasn’t a spell, not exactly. More like the air refusing to touch him unless he allowed it. Rain droplets curved away from him in perfect arcs, peeling off his body like he was a blade slicing through the sky.

He wasn’t flying. He was being launched, propelled by unrelenting, controlled detonations of wind beneath his feet, each burst sending him farther, faster, higher. A living projectile fired straight toward the pirate fleet.

That alone made him stand out like a beacon. As he cut through the storm, he felt dozens of hostile gazes lock onto him, casters, lookouts, anyone with the barest shred of mana perception. The man-shaped bullet breaking through the storm air left no room for subtlety.

Tch. Should’ve covered my face.

The thought flashed through his mind, sharp and irritated. Not because he feared being recognized. But because it would’ve been convenient to avoid whatever ridiculous stories would spread after this.

Still, he was here with allies. He wasn’t about to hide behind a mask when Kaela, Renvar, and Maurien were throwing themselves into battle with him. If anything, he needed the pirates to focus on him instead of them.

The enemy reacted almost immediately. A line of mana cannons along the closest ship rotated toward him, slow but precise, their aim tracking his movements through the clouds. Lightning reflected off the runic engravings along their barrels.

Then,

BOOM—!!

A cluster of mana blasts erupted from the ship, each shot firing in perfect formation. The projectiles tore through the rain and air like burning meteors, the glow lighting up the storm for a heartbeat. They were fast. And whoever was aiming them knew their craft. But Ludger wasn’t impressed.

He twisted at the first shot, body corkscrewing midair. The blast tore through the space he’d occupied not a second prior. He felt the heat of the mana scorch the wind, too close for comfort, but manageable.

The next volley came from his left. He bent his knees midair and detonated a burst of wind beneath his right foot.His body zigzagged upward in a blur.

ZSH–!

Three blasts scraped harmlessly past him, their shockwaves rippling across his cloak.

Another shot chased his heels. Another lined up from above. Ludger moved like he’d trained for this exact rhythm his entire life.

A burst downward, a twist right, a dive left, a sharp kick up. The blasts spiraled past him, detonating uselessly in the storm with booming flashes of white-blue light.

Anyone watching from the Tidebreaker would’ve sworn he was dancing between artillery. Anyone watching from the pirate ship would’ve sworn he was a demon darting through the sky. Ludger clicked his tongue as he stabilized above a rising wave.

When Ludger closed the final hundred meters, the flagship reacted like a beast finally recognizing the predator approaching its throat. A thunderous hum rippled through the storm.

Runes along the ship’s hull lit up, pale blue, then white, then blinding gold, and in the span of a heartbeat, a full dome of shimmering mana snapped into existence around the vessel. It wasn’t a simple shield. It wasn’t even naval-grade reinforcement.

It was identical to the barrier he had found at Verk’s mansion.Smooth. Opaque. Absolute. Not one raindrop penetrated its surface. Not one gust of wind disturbed the space within.A perfect sphere of stillness in the heart of a raging storm. Ludger narrowed his eyes.

“So you bastards have this too.”

The cannons, however, had no issue firing out of it; the barrier flexed for each blast like water parting for a stone. Mana projectiles continued streaming toward him with surgical accuracy, painting the sky with streaks of white fire as he closed in.

He didn’t dodge this time. He didn’t have to. He’d already chosen where to hit. He pulled both arms wide to his sides, palms open, and began feeding mana into them, thick, churning, compressed mana that vibrated up his arms and rattled his bones. The air around his hands twisted so violently the rain evaporated before touching him.

The storm’s roar dimmed. The ocean noise vanished. The world shrank to the hollow of his palms. Then Ludger slammed them together.

“TURTLE SHELL SHOCKWAVE.”

The blast erupted like a point-blank explosion of condensed mana, a focused shockwave that punched forward with sound-shattering force. The air warped. The storm recoiled. The ocean depressed into a bowl beneath him as the wave of power surged ahead.

It struck the mana shield, and the world boomed. A tremor rippled across the flagship. The shield flashed. Cracks spiderwebbed along its surface. The energy field buckled and wavered, struggling to reassert its stability. Then…

CRACK—KRAAASH!

A single hole tore open in the barrier, perfectly circular and barely wide enough for a person to slip through. Which was more than enough. Ludger kicked off the air, and shot straight through the hole before the shield could heal.

He landed on the deck in a crouch, boots thudding against polished wood reinforced with mana-conducting metal. The rainstorm cut off above his head as he entered the dry bubble beneath the barrier, leaving only the echo of the explosion ringing in the air.

Silence fell across the deck. Dozens of pirates, armed with enchanted cutlasses, runic rifles, caster bracelets, and gear far too high-grade for common raiders—stared at him with wide eyes. Several froze mid-motion. One dropped his weapon. A handful raised their cannons in shaking hands. Ludger stood, dusted off the soot on his sleeves, and casually lifted a hand in greeting.

“Hey y’all.”

The pirates gulped in unison.

Somewhere deeper in the ship… a man began to scream for reinforcements.

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