All Jobs and Classes! I Just Wanted One Skill, Not Them All!

Chapter 575

Yvar stared at him with a look that was half admiration and half despair.

He did facepalm this time, quietly, controlled, but unmistakable.

Because Ludger was talking about negotiating with the Regent like the other side was a minor guild trying to haggle over wagon fees. Like the Regent was a pushover.

Arslan watched Yvar’s reaction, then looked back at Ludger. And in his eyes was the same problem it always was with his son. The boy didn’t understand the difference between impossible and merely expensive. He only understood what he wanted.

And he was already calculating how to make the Empire pay for it.

Yvar held his face in his hand for a second longer, then forced himself to straighten. He looked between father and son like a man trying to keep two blades from crossing in a small room.

“We shouldn’t decide this now,” he said, voice firm despite the exhaustion. “Not tonight. Not with road dust still in your lungs and adrenaline still in his.” He flicked his eyes at Ludger. “We need a clear head.”

Ludger didn’t argue. That alone said how serious it was.

Yvar continued, “We sleep. We eat. We review everything we heard in the capital, twice. And you two talk with Elaine. Properly.”

At the mention of her name, the temperature of the room seemed to drop a degree. Ludger nodded once.

Arslan nodded too, slower. Both of them thinking the same thing without needing to say it out loud. Whatever they decided, it wouldn’t matter if Elaine disagreed.

A political fight with the Regent was dangerous. A cold war against Elaine decision was suicide, with extra steps.

When Arslan and Yvar finally left Ludger didn’t follow. He went back to the training tank.

It was quieter now. Not silent, Sigrid didn’t allow silence where effort was possible, but quieter in the way a storm became quieter when it moved farther away. The remaining candidates moved with less panic and more discipline, their bodies learning the ugly truth: underwater combat wasn’t about strength. It was about control.

Ludger walked past them without slowing, mind already rotating gears. He picked up his project and resumed. At first, his movements were smooth. Efficient. Hands doing what they always did: translate ideas into shapes the world had to obey. But after a few lines, he slowed. Not because of fatigue. Because his mind wasn’t on the golem anymore. It was on the Regent’s offer.

A title. A territory. A “business arrangement” wrapped in velvet words and sealed with imperial wax. Ludger pressed his fingers harder than necessary, then eased up before it snapped. He didn’t like losing tools. He didn’t like losing control.

He stared at the core cavity sketch and thought about cages. Swearing loyalty was a trap, even if it didn’t look like one yet.

Loyalty was permanent language in a world where terms shifted like sand. Today it was “cooperation.” Tomorrow it would be “obligation.” Next year it would be “national interest,” and suddenly he’d be told to build roads where he didn’t want them, reinforce forts he didn’t believe in, supply troops he didn’t trust.

Agendas changed. People in power changed too. And when they changed, they didn’t renegotiate with you like equals. They revised the rules and told you to adapt. He didn’t want to swear loyalty to anyone. Not the Empire. Not Torvares. Not some minister who smiled while sharpening knives.

He wanted Lionsguard to stay free enough to move, to choose, to survive. But… He thought about Elaine’s eyes when the twins cried and she pretended she wasn’t tired. He thought about the way the town leaned on his work like it was natural, like it wasn’t costing him time with his family.

He thought about the futures that existed without his control. If they stayed a border guild, they stayed disposable. Useful, tolerated… and then crushed the moment someone higher decided it was convenient. If they became nobility, there was paperwork and politics and chains. But there was also protection. Not because the Empire cared. Because the Empire hated instability on its own board.

A Viscount’s family being harmed wasn’t a tragedy to them. It was an incident. An embarrassment. A reason to move soldiers and make an example.

A better future for his mother and the twins, Elaine, Elle, Arash, was worth more than Ludger’s pride. He didn’t like that fact. He didn’t like how easy it made the offer to understand.

He worked slower now, letting each stroke settle while he measured the cost of each choice. Freedom. Or armor. He hated that the Regent had managed to put those two things on opposite sides of the table.

While his hand moved, Ludger’s eyes drifted to the tank.

The northerners trained the way they did everything, loud, direct, and fully committed to the moment. They weren’t thinking about tomorrow while they were in the water. They were thinking about air. About leverage. About whether the next hit would crack a rib or just bruise it.

They lived in the now until someone reminded them that the now wasn’t enough.

A big man surfaced too late, sucking air like he’d been punched in the lungs. He clung to the ladder, blinking water out of his eyes, chest heaving.

Before he could steady himself, Sigrid hooked an arm around him and drove an elbow into his ribs. Not hard enough to break anything. Hard enough to teach.

“Breathe,” Sigrid snarled. “Then work. You want to live today? Fine. You want to live tomorrow? Learn.”

The younger man flinched, coughed, then nodded and climbed back down. Ludger’s charcoal paused for a heartbeat.

They really did live in the moment… until someone elbowed their ribs and forced them to remember that tomorrow existed too. That was the difference between brave and dead.

And for all their noise, the northerners weren’t stupid. They didn’t trust easily when their lives were on the line. Not truly.

They trusted their people. Their blood. Their clans. The ones who would drag them out of a river with broken fingers if that’s what it took.

They didn’t place their survival in the hands of outsiders unless they had to.

And yet…

Ludger watched one of them adjust another’s stance with a quick shove. Saw a woman tilt her head toward the corner where his diagrams, then look away like she hadn’t.

There was a kind of trust there. Not the soft kind. The practical kind. They probably trusted him too, at least as much as northerners trusted anyone not born under their sky, because from the beginning he hadn’t demanded too much from them.

He hadn’t tried to turn their alliance into a leash. No forced oaths. No humiliating ceremonies. No “prove your loyalty” games. Just straight terms, clear splits, and results.

You guard routes. You fight when we fight. You get paid. You get food. You get a future that isn’t raiding until you die.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly as he returned to the project. That was why the Regent’s offer felt so poisonous. Not because it was obviously evil. Because it was the opposite of how trust was built. The northerners trusted people, not titles. They trusted behavior repeated over time.

The Empire wanted loyalty written in ink. Ludger drew another line, slow and deliberate, while the tank behind him churned with bodies and breath and lessons learned the hard way.

The northerners would keep living in the moment. Until someone elbowed their ribs and reminded them to plan for tomorrow. And Ludger… was the person who got elbowed first, because everyone assumed he could take it.

The answer had been sitting in front of him for days.

Ludger only noticed it because it irritated him.

He was looking in the distance when he saw her again, white cloak pulled up, hair tucked away, moving like she wanted to become part of the snow if she stayed quiet enough. Eclaire didn’t look at him. Didn’t acknowledge him. Didn’t even do the polite little nod most people offered out of fear, respect, or self-preservation.

She avoided him as much as possible. And then, without a shred of hesitation, she walked toward the frost labyrinth with the other two like it was a morning jog.

No ceremony. No grand speech. No “I’m here to prove myself.”

Just… in. Cold swallowed them. Ludger watched their backs disappear and felt a familiar irritation sharpen into something clearer.

Eclaire was an imperial heir. Not officially. Not on the papers. Not the one the Empire paraded around with banners and pretty lies. But she still had the blood.

Even if her little brother was supposed to be the future emperor, she was still there, a loose thread in the Regent’s hands, a name that could become a banner the wrong people rallied behind, a nuisance that couldn’t be ignored because ignoring it was how you got stabbed later.

A problem.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. If Lionsguard accepted the Regent’s terms, loyalty, rails, titles, “cooperation”, then Eclaire stopped being a hidden complication and became an imperial asset on imperial soil.

Or worse. She became leverage.

A reason for “inspectors” to visit. A reason for questions. A reason for someone to show up with polite smiles and too many soldiers, claiming they were only here to “ensure the safety of the Viscount’s household.”

Ludger clenched his jaw. That alone should’ve made the choice obvious.

Accepting the Regent’s terms was a bad idea. Because once you swore loyalty, you gave the Empire permission to care about what you were sheltering.

And when the Empire cared, it didn’t stop at caring. His gaze slid away from the labyrinth and toward the distance, toward the direction Torvares’ territory.

That was the part that made his annoyance turn acidic. Torvares’ opinion.

The old lord had told Arslan to accept the offer. Pushed it like it was the sensible path. The “stable” path.

But Torvares was also the one who had worked, quietly, carefully, to keep Eclaire out of the Empire’s sight. To tuck her under Lionsguard’s wings like contraband that happened to be a person.

So why would he want Lionsguard tied to the Empire now?

Why would he want imperial eyes closer?

Unless… Ludger cut the thought off before it could finish. Because the endings were all ugly.

Either Torvares knew something Ludger didn’t… or Torvares was playing a game where Eclaire was a piece he was willing to sacrifice if it bought him a larger advantage all of a sudden… And Ludger couldn’t tell which. He hated that.

He hated not being able to read the old lord’s angle, not being able to predict which way the board would tilt when pressure hit. Torvares was too smooth, too practiced, every word measured, every expression controlled, like politics had carved him into a weapon that looked like a grandfather.

Ludger looked toward the frost labyrinth, listening to the muffled sounds of battle deeper inside. Eclaire would survive. She moved like someone trained to stay alive in rooms full of knives.

That wasn’t comforting. It was another warning.

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