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

Chapter 583

Ludger pulled the folded scrap of paper from his pouch and opened it against the wind.

The lines were crude, but the logic was clean, rivers, ridges, a few angry dots labeled with landmarks that sounded like insults. When he held it up against the horizon, something clicked in his head.

This wasn’t just a route. It was a blind spot.

He’d been living near these lands for years without ever bothering to understand them beyond what was necessary. That was fine when the only threats were obvious.

It stopped being fine when he started hunting for knowledge that could die with an old man in a hut. Ludger stared at the map and felt a new itch form behind his eyes.

I need to map this area too. Properly.

Not for curiosity. For leverage. For options.

For the simple fact that if he ever needed to move people, hide people, or move something valuable without the Empire noticing, the north was a perfect place, assuming he knew where he was going.

He folded the paper again, tighter this time, and tucked it away.

Then he lifted his head and scanned the horizon like a hunter.

Snowfields rolled out in pale waves, broken by dark spines of rock and distant ridgelines. The air was clear enough that you could see farther than felt reasonable, but distance in the north was a liar, peaks looked close until you walked toward them for an hour and realized they hadn’t grown at all.

Still, landmarks existed if you knew how to look. Ludger’s gaze caught on a split shape far out, two jagged stones rising from a ridge like a broken tooth.

Bear tooth boulder.

Annoying name. Useful marker. He shifted his stance, angling his body toward it, and let mana gather in his legs.

Wind Step.

The world snapped. He launched forward, body lightened, air pushing him across the snow like he’d stolen momentum from the wind itself. Each step covered more distance than it should have, his boots barely touching the surface before he was already moving again.

It was faster. Cleaner. But the north didn’t let him pretend it was effortless.

The snow here wasn’t the polite kind that sat on top like powder. It was deep and clingy, the kind that crawled up his boots, packed into seams, and tried to steal heat through any gap it could find. Even with Wind Step, the cold found him eventually, filling his cloak, his scarf, crusting his sleeves, sliding into his collar like a thin knife.

After a few bursts, he had to stop. Not because his lungs burned. Because the snow started sticking to him in clumps, heavy, wet where it melted slightly from his body heat, then freezing again into stubborn ice. It gathered in his joints, weighed down his movements, and turned speed into friction.

Ludger clicked his tongue softly, irritated. He brushed at his sleeves, but the ice didn’t care about his hands. So he did what he always did. He cheated. Mana surged through him, controlled, familiar, almost comforting.

Flame Overdrive.

Heat bloomed from inside his muscles like a furnace turning on, not wild fire, but a tight internal burn that pushed warmth through his limbs and melted the packed snow off his clothes in seconds. Steam rolled off him in a brief hiss, rising into the cold air and vanishing almost immediately.

Warming up was easy. Always had been. He shook his arms once, loosened his shoulders, and felt his body return to responsiveness. Then he looked back at the distant split boulder, eyes narrowing.

Note: Wind Step good. Snow accumulation bad. Flame Overdrive fixes. Still wastes time.

He’d remember that.

He resumed, launching forward again in bursts, crossing white distance, stopping when the north tried to glue itself to him, burning it away, and moving on.

Each stop was an annoyance. Each stop was also a data point. And as the jagged “bear tooth” grew closer, Ludger’s mind kept recording the land around him, not just as scenery, but as a map waiting to be written.

By the time Ludger reached the first destination, the sun was already sinking.

Up here, sunset didn’t feel romantic. It felt like the world was closing a door.

The light went thin and slanted, painting the snowfields in pale gold that didn’t warm anything. Shadows stretched from every ridge and rock, long and sharp, and the cold sharpened with them, wind biting harder as the last heat bled out of the sky.

Ludger stopped on a low rise and exhaled.

His breath practically froze in front of him, fog turning dense and crystalline for a heartbeat before the wind tore it apart. Every inhale scraped cold through his nose and down his throat, the kind of cold that reminded you your body was still just meat pretending it was durable.

But he could endure that much. Wind was fine. Air was fine. As long as the snow didn’t touch his skin.

Snow was a thief. It found gaps. It melted, seeped, then froze again like a curse. It wasn’t the temperature that hurt, it was the wet bite that followed.

Ludger adjusted his cloak, checked his gloves, then looked out at the place Sigrid had described.

The ridge line curved here, dipping into a shallow valley. Dark rocks broke through the white like old bones. And ahead, exactly where the map said it would be, stood the landmark:

A split boulder rising from the slope, jagged and crooked, like a bear’s tooth snapped in half. Wind had carved the edges smooth in some places and left others sharp enough to cut skin. Snow had drifted around its base, piling into ugly shapes that could hide anything, tracks, traps, bodies.

Past it, the valley opened, and even from here Ludger could see faint wisps of steam lifting from the ground in lazy spirals.

Hot vents. The air carried a hint of it now that he was close, sulfur, sharp and unpleasant, like rotten eggs mixed with wet stone. Sigrid had said there was a camp here sometimes.

Sometimes not. Right now? Not.

Ludger scanned the area, eyes moving in slow sweeps. No smoke columns. No movement. No silhouettes against the snow. Just empty rock, thin steam, and wind. He clicked his tongue softly.

Of course.

He stepped down into the valley, boots crunching on packed snow where the ground had warmed it just enough to harden, and stopped near the vents. The heat rising from them was faint, nothing like a fire, just a gentle warmth you could feel if you stood close, enough to thin the snow into crusty patches of exposed stone.

Still no one. Fine. Ludger lowered his focus to the ground. His eyes narrowed, and his mana sank into the earth.

Seismic Sense.

The world opened under his feet like a second set of eyes.

Vibration became information. Density became shape. Empty space became a black outline against solid rock. His sense expanded outward in a wide, controlled pulse, then kept expanding.

At level one hundred, it wasn’t a trick anymore. It was surveillance.

The valley’s bones revealed themselves: sloping stone layers, pockets where hot gas traveled, old fractures and seams. He mapped it all in moments, reaching outward until the whole area was practically inside his head.

Nothing living on the surface. No hidden tents. No buried bodies. But then… A faint echo. Not sound, presence. A disturbance in the pattern that didn’t match rock or vent or snow. Ludger’s focus tightened like a fist closing. He followed it.

The sensation led him toward the far end of the valley, where a ridge of darker stone rose like a collapsed wall. There, half-hidden by drifted snow and shadow, was an opening, a narrow cave mouth with steam curling out of it, thin as breath.

Inside, the earth felt… occupied. Not many people. Not a crowd. Just one steady presence tucked deeper within the stone like an animal in a den. Ludger’s breath fogged again, freezing at the edges.

He didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t call out. He simply stepped toward the cave entrance, eyes calm and cold, and let his mana settle into readiness.

If this was one of Sigrid’s “old goats”…

Then it was time to find out whether he could be convinced with words. Or whether the north would insist on its usual language.

Ludger stopped a few paces in front of the cave mouth.

The opening was narrow, framed by dark stone slick with condensation where the warm air met the cold. Steam drifted out in slow curls, dissolving into the evening wind. The sun was low now, throwing long shadows across the snow and turning the world into sharp edges and quiet.

He could feel the presence inside. Steady. Alive. Unmoving. Ludger lifted his chin slightly and spoke into the cave, voice even.

“Hello.”

Nothing. No cough. No grunt. No irritated old man telling him to go die somewhere else. Just the soft hiss of steam and the wind dragging snow across rock like sandpaper.

Ludger waited, still as stone, eyes half-lidded. He listened with his ears, with his mana, with the subtle pressure of Seismic Sense that still kept the cave mapped in his head.

Someone was definitely in there. They were just choosing not to answer. He could have walked in. He could have forced the issue. He could have used earth magic to widen the entrance or drag the person out like a bad root. But he didn’t. Not yet.

He didn’t like walking into unknown spaces without being invited. Not because he feared the dark, but because he respected what the dark often hid, traps, ambushes, and stubborn pride wrapped in old bones.

After a full minute of silence, Ludger sighed. It was small, controlled, and entirely exhausted.

“Alright,” he muttered.

Then he sat down in front of the cave, back against a cold rock, posture relaxed enough to look harmless while his body stayed ready to move. Snow crunched under him. Steam warmed one side of his face while the wind tried to freeze the other.

It seemed he had to practice patience for once. Unfortunate.

Ludger dug into his pack and pulled out a small notebook and pen. He didn’t have a proper desk, but he didn’t need one. His lap was stable enough.

If the cave wanted to play silence, he could play work. He flipped to a blank section and wrote a title, the letters crisp and practical.

SAGE BASICS — FIELD MANUAL (RESTRICTED DRAFT)

He paused, then added a note underneath.

For trainees who can’t afford to die while thinking they’re special.

Then he started outlining the essentials, short, brutal, and usable.

1) Mana Bolt

Purpose: reliable ranged pressure, finishing blows, forcing movement.

Core principle: compress mana, release with intent; don’t “throw” it, push it through a point.

Common mistakes: overcharging → misfire, shaking aim, burning circuits.

2) Mana Wall

Purpose: survive. buy time. control space.

Core principle: a wall is a shape plus a rule. The rule is “You Shall Not Pass.”

Notes: start thin; thickness is less important than stability. Anchor to the ground. Don’t float it unless you like dying.

3) Spiritual Core

Purpose: foundation for sustained casting and mental resilience.

Core principle: breathing + focus + consistency.

Warning: don’t force growth. forced growth cracks people.

He wrote like he always did, no poetry, no fluff. Just the kind of instructions a half-panicked trainee could read once and still use under pressure.

Every few lines, he glanced at the cave mouth. Still silent. Fine. He kept writing.

Minutes passed. The sun dipped lower. The steam thickened in the colder air. Ludger’s fingers stayed warm enough inside his gloves, and when they didn’t, a flicker of internal heat from Flame Overdrive fixed it without effort.

He finished a section on mana discipline drills, five-minute routines, repetition counts, failure signs.

He started a paragraph on combat application, how to chain Mana Bolt into a short Mana Wall to create a kill lane.

And then…

A sound. Soft. Not wind. Not steam. Footsteps. Slow, deliberate steps coming from inside the cave toward him.

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