Another week passed in much the same way.

Training. Correction. Progress. Repetition.

The trainees stopped thinking of the yard as a place to endure and started treating it like a tool, something that shaped them if they used it properly. Ludger watched it happen without comment, adjusting drills, rotating skill slots, letting the Guild Master job drink steadily from the constant effort.

That was when the idea took hold.

Runic enchanted Bracers.

Not weapons. Not armor.

The Magic Knight class favored summoned weapons, but the drawbacks were obvious. Focus requirements. Continuous mana output. Mental load during combat. Fine for specialists. Less so for recruits or veterans who already had their own fighting styles.

Runes could solve that. Ludger tested the theory himself.

For an entire week, he burned through his mana reserves daily, keeping multiple summoned weapons floating around him at all times. Not wielded, maintained. Anchored. Stabilized. Observed.

A sword. Another sword. A heavier variant. Then he pushed further.

The system responded as the class leveled up, he unlocked new weapons and not only weapons..

A hammer formed, dense, blunt, heavy with potential.

A club followed, simpler but brutally efficient.

Finally, a shield, broad, solid, hovering at his side with a steady pull instead of an edge.

Each summon settled into place with the same feedback. Same cost. Same upkeep. Same rules. Ludger exhaled slowly.

That confirms it.

The skills weren’t weapon-specific.

They were role-specific.

Impact. Control. Protection.

That meant flexibility. He carved test runes the same night.

Simple arrays. Clean channels. No unnecessary flourish. When he fed mana into them once, just once, the response was immediate.

The weapon manifested. No strain. No focus tax. No continuous output. The rune handled stabilization. The system handled form. The user only needed to supply an initial charge. After that? The weapon existed.

Ludger tested it again. And again. Same result. The demerits vanished. He leaned back against the worktable, fingers stained with chalk and mana residue.

This isn’t just for Magic Knights.

Hammers for frontline bruisers. Clubs for those without refined technique. Shields for anyone who needed to hold a line. Different people. Different roles. Same solution.

He looked at the unfinished bracers lined up on the bench and felt a familiar sense of alignment settle in.

This wasn’t raw power. It was access.

And if he did this right, if he standardized the runes, controlled distribution, and tied them to responsibility instead of rank… Then the guild wouldn’t just grow stronger. It would grow broader.

Ludger reached for the next bracer and began carving again. Training could wait an hour. This was worth getting right.

Raukor turned the bracer over in his hands, thick fingers tracing the rune lines with a practiced eye. He frowned.

At first glance, it was the kind of thing that made a smith’s instincts bristle. Runic summoning. Integrated channels. Self-stabilizing constructs.

The sort of magic technology people liked to point at and say this is why we don’t need craftsmen anymore.

Raukor snorted softly. For a moment, he imagined a future where warriors just strapped on enchanted gear and skipped the forge entirely. No heat. No hammer. No calluses earned the hard way.

Then he looked closer. The bracer wasn’t perfect.

The metal bore microscopic stress marks where mana had passed too often through the same channel. The rune edges were already rounding, not from use in combat, but from existence. Sustained magic degraded the material, slowly but inevitably.

He grunted.

“Still need forging,” Raukor muttered.

And repairs. Frequent ones, if pushed hard. The kind that required understanding both metal and magic, not just one or the other.

He flexed the bracer once more and felt the latent pull inside it, the demand it would place on whoever wore it.

The mana cost was… unpleasant.

Not lethal, but far beyond what a casual user could afford. Anyone without discipline would burn themselves out in minutes.

Raukor’s frown eased. Useful, yes. But not easy. Not forgiving. Not something you handed to an idiot and expected miracles.

He glanced toward the training yard, where Ludger would stood among the trainees, correcting a stance with a quiet word, watching another pair adjust without being told.

Raukor huffed a short laugh.

“Figures,” he said.

The tools weren’t the problem. People were. And Ludger, whether he realized it or not, was building the kind of people who could actually use them without breaking themselves or everything around them.

Raukor set the bracer down carefully. His profession wasn’t disappearing anytime soon. If anything, it was about to get a lot more work.

Ludger worked late into the night, the table at home crowded with half-finished bracers and discarded metal shavings. The room smelled faintly of heated alloy and chalk dust, the kind of smell that only came from sustained, careful work. He tested one idea after another, carving runes, erasing them, then carving again, adjusting channel widths, redistributing mana flow, reinforcing stress points that had shown early signs of degradation. None of the changes were dramatic on their own, but together they pushed the design closer to something reliable rather than merely impressive.

As his hands moved, his thoughts wandered.

Viola surfaced in his mind without effort. She was still training, still struggling to summon a magic sword through focus alone. The progress was slow, uneven, and frustrating, but real. Ludger could easily send her one of the bracers and let the rune handle the summoning for her. It would be faster. Cleaner. More efficient.

He didn’t.

Training was always useful, even when better tools existed. Especially then. If something happened, if her equipment was damaged, stolen, or rendered useless by interference, being able to summon a weapon without assistance could decide whether she lived or died. Runes were support. Skill was insurance. He wanted her to have both.

The thought settled, and he returned to the bracers. Then Torvares came to mind.

It had been a long time since the negotiations began. Months, at this point. Quiet talks with the suspected owners of sealed labyrinths, carefully worded offers, indirect pressure, nothing that could be traced back too easily. And then, gradually, the messages stopped. No refusal. No counteroffer. No confirmation.

Just silence.

Ludger paused, index finger tapping against the table in a slow, steady rhythm. He disliked waiting when it served no purpose. Waiting was acceptable when it bought information or leverage. This was neither.

Several months without an answer meant one of two things: they were stalling on purpose, or something had changed behind the scenes. Either way, it wasn’t good.

The outline of a different approach had already formed in his mind. Routes. Covers. Ways to enter their sphere without announcing himself. Infiltration wasn’t his preferred option, but it was direct. It produced results.

Ludger stopped tapping and picked up the bracer again.

If they weren’t going to answer him… Then he would stop waiting.

It felt almost fateful.

As if the world itself had been listening to him the night before.

The next day, Lionfang stirred with an unfamiliar tension as a carriage rolled through the southern road without announcement. The trip from Torvares’ estate took only a few hours, but that was exactly why it stood out, Lord Torvares did not travel personally unless the matter was rare, serious, or both.

Ludger was in the training yard when he noticed the change. Conversations dulled. Movements slowed. Heads turned.

Then he saw it.

The carriage bore polished steel fittings and reinforced wheels, but it was the emblem that mattered, the red bull worked into silver plating along the door. Clean. Unmistakable.

Torvares. No banners. No entourage stretching down the road. Just the carriage and a tight formation of guards. And no Viola. That absence weighed heavier than any armed escort.

Ludger handed the drill off without a word and stepped away from the yard, his expression settling into calm neutrality as he walked toward the gate. Whatever this was, it wasn’t routine. Torvares’ visits usually came with advance notice, political framing, or at least his granddaughter’s presence to soften the edges.

This had none of that.

The carriage came to a stop. The guards dismounted first, forming a perimeter with practiced efficiency. Then the door opened.

Torvares stepped down alone.

He looked the same as ever, broad-shouldered, composed, dressed with the restrained authority of someone who no longer needed to prove his status. But there was tension in his posture, subtle enough that most wouldn’t notice.

Ludger reached him just as the last guard took position. Before Ludger could speak, Torvares bowed his head. Not deeply. Not ceremonially. But unmistakably.

“I’ve come to apologize,” Torvares said.

The words landed harder than any accusation. Ludger frowned.

“What is this about?” Ludger asked.

The frown hadn’t left his face. If anything, it deepened.

He didn’t like this—public gestures meant to carry weight. Torvares bowing his head in front of guards, townsfolk, trainees who were pretending not to stare. It was sincere, yes, but also deliberate. A signal. An announcement without words.

Ludger had always found that kind of thing… inefficient.

Torvares straightened slowly, meeting Ludger’s eyes without flinching. Whatever pride he carried, he’d set it aside before stepping out of the carriage.

“The plan failed,” Torvares said plainly. “Completely.”

No hedging. No softening.

“The investigation into the sealed labyrinths stalled,” he continued. “Negotiations didn’t just slow, they were interrupted. Halted outright.”

Ludger’s gaze sharpened. “By who?”

Torvares didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he exhaled, a long, weary breath that carried more exhaustion than frustration. The kind that came from realizing a problem had grown far beyond its original scope.

“A third party,” he said at last. “One with the authority to make everyone else stop moving.”

Ludger waited. Torvares’ jaw tightened slightly before he spoke again.

“Emperor Halvyr the Third passed away a week ago.”

The words landed quietly, and heavily.

“For now, his younger brother has taken control as regent,” Torvares went on. “The emperor’s son is still a child. Three years old. Too young to rule.”

Ludger’s thoughts shifted immediately, pieces snapping into place.

“A regency,” he said.

“Yes,” Torvares replied. “And with it came… scrutiny.”

He folded his hands behind his back, posture rigid. “The regent began reviewing matters deemed strategically sensitive. Resources. Territories. Irregular ownership claims.”

His eyes met Ludger’s again.

“Somehow,” Torvares said, voice lower now, “he became aware of the negotiations surrounding the sealed labyrinths.”

Silence stretched between them.

Ludger felt it then, the reason Torvares had come himself. The reason Viola wasn’t here. The reason this apology hadn’t waited for privacy. This wasn’t a local complication. It was the center shifting.

“So,” Ludger said slowly, “the waiting wasn’t hesitation.”

“No,” Torvares answered. “It was containment.”

Ludger looked past him for a moment, toward the walls of Lionfang, the training yard beyond, the people moving under assumptions that were already outdated.

A regent emperor. A dead ruler. A child heir. And sealed labyrinths suddenly under imperial interest. He looked back at Torvares.

“That explains the silence,” Ludger said. “It doesn’t explain why you’re apologizing.”

Torvares’ expression tightened.

“Because,” he said quietly, “by the time I realized how far this had gone, I could no longer move without dragging you into it.”

And that, Ludger realized, was the real problem. The waiting hadn’t been empty. It had been someone else taking control.

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