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

Chapter 589

Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

He took several deep breaths in a row, slow, controlled, deliberate, feeling the air fill him and empty him. He watched the steam leave his mouth and realized the rhythm of it mattered. The way his ribs expanded, the way his diaphragm pulled, the way the cold air sharpened sensation inside his chest.

Then he took one deeper. Much deeper. He breathed in until he could feel his lungs reaching their limits, pressure building behind his ribs, his body instinctively wanting to release.

He didn’t. He held it. For a heartbeat, the world went very still.

Ludger’s fists clenched. And then he started punching.

One. Two. Three.

Fast, straight strikes into empty air, clean form, tight shoulders, hips snapping, the motion efficient and brutal. He didn’t breathe out. He didn’t grunt. He just moved.

Punch after punch after punch, all while holding that breath like a reservoir. The old man opened one eye.

He watched Ludger in silence, the boy’s cheeks taut, his chest held full, his punches landing on nothing but air, yet each strike carried a subtle, controlled force, as if Ludger was trying to spend something internal without letting it escape the easy way.

The old man’s gaze sharpened. It seemed the boy had guessed something. Not the whole art. But the first hinge of it. Breath. Stamina. Fuel. Control.

Ludger’s punches didn’t slow. His muscles burned, but his eyes stayed locked, focused on the feeling inside, trying to sense where the energy went when he refused to vent it as breath.

The old man didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His single open eye said enough:

Good. Now chase it.

Ludger did it again. Deep breath, lungs filled to the limit, hold. Then motion.

Punches cutting through cold air in sharp, efficient lines. Shoulders snapping. Hips turning. Feet biting stone and snow. No exhale. No release. Just force drawn from inside and pushed outward through muscle and intent.

His vision started to tighten at the edges the first time. A faint dimming, like the world was trying to close the shutters. Ludger didn’t stop. He adjusted. Shorter punches. Cleaner mechanics. Less wasted motion. He didn’t fight the dizziness with panic, he fought it with efficiency.

Second round. Third. By the fourth, his body was screaming.

Not metaphorically. He could feel the complaints stacking: burning in his forearms, deep ache in his shoulders, his ribs protesting the held air, legs tightening like they wanted to cramp. The instinct to gasp became a physical pressure behind his throat.

He pushed anyway.

He rode the edge of passing out until his mind went very quiet, because the mind always went quiet when it realized the body might shut it off.

And in that quiet… something shifted. He began to understand. Not the whole art. Not even close. But the first real piece of it.

He could feel how to force his muscles to move a fraction better even when they screamed in pain, not by ignoring the pain, but by changing what he asked of them. Tighten less here. Engage more there. Pull from the hips instead of the shoulder. Stack bone and tendon so muscle didn’t have to do everything alone.

He could feel how to hold his breath a little longer each session, not with stubbornness, but by controlling the moment where panic tried to take over. The point where the body begged for air wasn’t the true limit. It was a warning.

He could feel his internal organs working, the way oxygen fed the blood, the way the blood fed the muscle, the way pressure in his chest affected rhythm, heat, output. It wasn’t poetic.

It was mechanical. A machine learning where its fuel lines were. And for the first time, stamina wasn’t just a number in his head. It was a thing, a burn he could locate, trace, and push. He went one round too far. His knees buckled.

He dropped hard, stone biting through cloth as he hit the ground. His arms refused to lift again, muscles suddenly empty, as if they’d been unplugged. His chest heaved on instinct now, breath finally tearing out of him in rough pulls.

Ludger stayed on his knees for a moment, head lowered, saliva stringing briefly at his lip as he forced air back into himself. Then, even though his arms still trembled, even though his body wanted to collapse fully, he forced himself upright and shifted back into a seated position.

Cross-legged. Spine straighter this time. He closed his eyes. Not to sleep. To lock the experience in place. He meditated on what he’d felt, on the internal burn, the way the breath changed the body’s output, the small tricks that let pain become something you worked around instead of something that stopped you.

The cave was silent except for his breathing. Somewhere nearby, the old man watched without speaking. Ludger didn’t need him to speak. For the first time since arriving in this endless winter, Ludger had something real. A foothold… And now he just had to climb.

Morning came back like it always did in the north, quiet, pale, and cold enough to make the world feel brittle.

The vents still breathed. Steam still curled. Snow still lay heavy on every surface as if it had been there forever.

The old man opened his eyes. He’d been meditating for six hours straight, full focus, no shifting, no fidgeting, no wasted thought. To him, that was normal.

Then he saw Ludger. And his eyes narrowed into a squint. The boy was sitting cross-legged near the cave mouth, spine straight, chin slightly lowered, breathing slow, too slow for someone who had been pushing himself this hard.

Something was different. The old man could tell without needing to touch him, without needing to test him. It was in the aura around Ludger. Not a flashy glow, not the pretty shimmer of mana used for spells.

A pressure. A presence.

It wasn’t much yet, but it was there, an unmistakable layer that hadn’t existed before. The old man felt it like heat from a stone warmed by the sun, except it wasn’t heat.

It was vital energy, close enough to the surface that it almost felt like it was leaking from Ludger’s skin.

Almost. Not leaking. Just… not fully contained. Not fully controlled across the whole body yet. It was like Ludger’s energy had expanded outward by a finger’s width, like his body had become larger in a way that had nothing to do with muscle or bone.

He was the same size. But he didn’t feel the same size. He felt like a space you had to respect. The old man studied him in silence, eyes scanning from posture to breathing to the subtle tension in shoulders and neck. He watched the way Ludger’s chest rose, not just with air, but with intent.

Then the old man’s jaw shifted slightly, almost like he’d bitten down on a thought. Astonishment. He didn’t like the feeling. Astonishment was for fools who got surprised by obvious things.

And yet… He couldn’t help it.

He had heard the word genius before. He’d heard it thrown around for boys who learned a sword form quickly, or girls who memorized a spell faster than their peers.

That kind of genius didn’t matter. Not here. Not in the art of mastering your own body. Because the body didn’t care how clever you were. It cared how consistent you were. How patient. How honest with sensation. It cared how many times you failed and reset without lying to yourself.

The first step of this path had taken the old man years.

Years of cold mornings. Years of pain and stubborn repetition. Years of almost-understanding followed by failure.

And Ludger… Ludger had taken that first step in three days.

Three. The old man stared at him, eyes narrowed, mind unwilling to accept it even while his senses confirmed it.

Ludger opened his eyes.

The moment he did, the pressure around him softened, like a held breath finally released. The faint aura that had been pressing outward faded back into his skin, not vanishing, but folding inward with a control he hadn’t had yesterday.

He let out a long breath of relief, shoulders dropping a fraction.

Then the System answered.

It didn’t flash lights or shake the cave. It simply stamped reality with cold certainty.

[Class Unlocked: Monk - +5 Strength, + 5 Vitality, + 5 Dexterity, + 5 Endurance.]

[Skill Acquired: Vitality Well - Allows you to manipulate your stamina according to the level of the skill. This technique allows you to surpass your limits according to the amount of stamina used.]

Ludger blinked once, reading it twice to make sure his tired eyes weren’t lying.

Monk.

That… was a bit weird.

It also didn’t make sense in the most annoying way possible.

How could Monk be an evolution of the Berserker path?

One was calm discipline. The other was controlled insanity. They sounded like opposites. But the System didn’t care about aesthetics. It cared about function. And the function was right there.

Vitality Well.

The name was a little misleading, “vitality” sounded like health, like healing, like becoming harder to kill. But the feeling in his body told him the truth immediately.

This wasn’t about wounds. This was about stamina. About the fuel beneath everything, how fast it burned, how it recovered, how it could be throttled, conserved, and pushed without snapping the body in half. It wasn’t infinite. It wasn’t free.

It was controlled.

He could feel it like a reservoir he hadn’t known how to touch before. A well.

And he could adjust the draw, according to the skill’s level, according to his control. Ludger sat there for a moment, breathing slowly, letting the realization settle with a quiet satisfaction that felt almost foreign.

Regardless of the weird naming… He’d achieved his goal. He looked at the old man and inclined his head.

“Thank you,” Ludger said. “For the lesson.”

The old man’s face didn’t soften. If anything, he frowned as if Ludger had just insulted him by acting finished.

“You took the first step,” the old man said flatly.

He stared at Ludger like he was looking at a child who had learned to walk and was now acting like he’d conquered the world.

“You have much to learn from there.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched.

Then he actually smiled, small, controlled, but real.

“I know,” Ludger said. “But I’ll progress at my own pace from here.”

The old man studied him for a long moment, eyes narrow, as if deciding whether that was arrogance or confidence.

The old man watched Ludger for a moment, then spoke, voice rough as ever.

“What will you do now?”

Ludger was already moving.

He stood, rolled his shoulders, and started packing with efficient hands, pen, notebook back into the pouch, water secured, food checked, straps tightened. He didn’t waste motion.

“I’m continuing north,” Ludger said. “Sigrid told me to visit two others like you.”

The old man’s brow ridge dipped.

Ludger added, dryly, “She didn’t call you ‘like you.’ She called you old goats.”

A faint twitch hit the old man’s mouth, something between offense and amusement.

“She has a sharp tongue. Valk,” Valk muttered.

Thank you for reading!

Don't forget to follow, favorite, and rate. If you want to read 400 chapters ahead, you can check my patreon: /Comedian0