novelraw Chapter 598
Chapter 598
Shera’s eyes narrowed as if that was the entire point.
“It’s not a contract written in ink,” she said. “It’s intent. Connection. A thread.” She gestured vaguely, like she was talking about something that couldn’t be held with hands. “Summoning works in actions and meaning. Not neat explanations.”
Ludger’s frown deepened. Abstract terms. Abstract steps. Of course. He’d gotten used to classes that clicked into place like mechanisms: do X, meet condition Y, unlock Z. This felt like stepping into fog and trusting that the ground existed.
Still… he’d come this far. He looked at the dire wolf, felt its wary acceptance through mana, and exhaled slowly through his nose.
“Alright,” Ludger said quietly. “I’ll do it your way.”
Ludger sighed, long and resigned, like he was accepting that the world insisted on being theatrical today.
He approached the dire wolf slowly, making sure his movements stayed smooth and predictable. The beast watched him with half-lidded eyes, ears flicking once, body tense but no longer ready to bolt.
Ludger reached out and grabbed its big head.
Firm, not gentle, hands planted on thick fur and solid bone, thumbs braced under the jawline the way you held something that could still decide to be stupid.
The wolf growled low.
Ludger leaned in slightly and said, deadpan, “Don’t bite me.”
The wolf’s lips twitched.
“It’ll hurt more on you than on me,” Ludger added, tapping his arm guard once with his knuckle like it was proof. “And I don’t feel like wrestling again.”
The dire wolf huffed, offended.
Ludger didn’t wait for consent in the human sense. He simply guided the beast’s head forward and lowered his own until his forehead pressed against the wolf’s.
Warm fur. Cold air. A strange stillness.
He closed his eyes.
For a moment he felt awkward, because this wasn’t a rune. This wasn’t a fight. This was… intimate in a way he didn’t like acknowledging. Ludger never liked or disliked animals, his only thought about them was not to keep them locked in place since it felt wrong.
Regardless, he could feel the wolf’s mana now. The tension. The alertness. The sharp, animal caution. Beneath it, a thin current of acceptance, earned through food, persistence, and the simple fact that Ludger hadn’t tried to dominate it with fear.
He inhaled once. Then he spoke, not to the wolf’s ears, but to the thread between them. His voice was quiet, steady, and it carried the same weight he used when he made decisions for Lionfang. Like a lord making a vow to a knight.
“Listen,” Ludger said softly. “I won’t pretend I’m kind. I’m not here to save you.”
He paused, letting his intent settle.
“But I will be fair.”
His hands tightened slightly on the wolf’s head, grounding himself and the beast at the same time.
“I will not starve you,” Ludger continued. “I will not throw you away. I will not call you to die for nothing.”
Another pause.
“If you stand with me,” he said, voice calm and absolute, “you will eat. You will grow stronger. You will have a place that is not just cold and hunger.”
He exhaled slowly, feeling the wolf’s instincts press back, testing the truth in his words.
“In return,” Ludger said, “you will answer when I call. You will fight beside me when I decide it matters. Not as a pet. Not as a tool.”
His tone sharpened just a fraction.
“As an ally.”
He leaned forward, forehead still pressed to fur, and let his intent sharpen into a single, clear line.
“I offer you my mana as a mark,” Ludger said. “A path back to me. A bond you can feel.”
“And I offer you this,” he finished, voice low. “If anyone tries to take you, hurt you, or break you for their own purpose, then they’ll learn what it means to make an enemy of me.”
He held the contact for a long breath. Then one more. Silent, letting the “agreement” exist without being forced. When he finally opened his eyes, he didn’t pull away immediately.
He waited, steady hands, steady breathing, watching for the wolf’s response in the only language that mattered now. For a heartbeat after Ludger finished speaking, nothing happened. Just the cold air. The wolf’s breath. The pressure of fur under his hands.
Then the thread between them tightened. Warmth bloomed at the point where their foreheads touched, subtle at first, like heat spreading under the skin. The wolf’s mana surged in response, and Ludger felt his own mana answer, spiraling in a clean, controlled loop.
A soft glow echoed outward. Not a blinding flash like Shera’s eagle.
A warm pulse, golden-white, spreading through the clearing in a quiet ring, lighting the trunks of the trees and the hardened lines in the soil for a single breath before fading back into morning.
Ludger inhaled sharply. The connection snapped into clarity. The dire wolf’s “feelings” had been vague currents before, tension, caution, hunger, acceptance.
Now they were sharper. Not words. Not sentences. But impulses with shape.
Stay.
Food.
Pack.
Mine.
This one… strong.
Ludger’s eyes widened a fraction as the wolf’s awareness pressed back through the link, brushing against his own thoughts like a curious snout. It wasn’t intelligence like a human’s, but it was unmistakably present, reading him the way he’d been trying to read it.
He barely had time to process it. The dire wolf suddenly shoved forward. Hard. Ludger lost balance and went down onto his back in the dirt with a solid thump.
Before he could even roll, the beast was on him, front paws planted on his chest, huge head lowering… and it began licking his face. Long, rough tongue. Excessive enthusiasm. Absolutely no respect for personal space. It smelled like meat, blood, and wild animal breath. Ludger ignored it. He lay there, half pinned, half assaulted, and let out a slow breath that was dangerously close to a laugh.
“Alright,” he muttered, voice muffled against fur. “I get it.”
The wolf licked again.
Harder. Ludger felt its intent through the pact like a blunt hammer.
Pack.
And, disturbingly, he could sense that the wolf could taste his thoughts too, at least the emotion behind them. The moment his irritation spiked, the wolf’s ears flicked. The moment he relaxed, the wolf pressed closer, satisfied.
Then the System responded. Cold text burned across his perception, crisp and undeniable.
[Class Unlocked: Magic Tamer + 07 Dexterity, + 07 Wisdom, + 07 Luck.]
[Skill Acquired: Feral Ally Summoning - Allows you to summon an ally companion to your location, the level of the skill determines the speed in which the creature moves to your location according to the distance. Cost: 100 mana]
Ludger blinked, eyes narrowing as he read it twice even while the wolf continued its enthusiastic face-cleaning campaign.
Magic Tamer. Summoning skill. So Shera hadn’t been wrong about the “summoning” part after all. He’d tamed it. He’d bonded it. And now he could call it.
Ludger lifted one armored forearm to shield his face from another lick, then looked past the wolf’s shoulder toward Shera with a flat expression that tried very hard to pretend he wasn’t being dominated by affection.
“It worked,” he said.
The wolf licked his cheek again like it disagreed with his tone. Ludger sighed.
“…Yes. It worked.”
Shera stood a few steps away, arms crossed, watching the scene with the expression of someone witnessing a successful ritual and immediately regretting encouraging it.
“What will you do now?” she asked.
Ludger was still on the ground. The dire wolf was still on his chest. Its tongue was still doing its best to sand his face down to the bone.
And Ludger… Ludger grinned. A real grin, sharp and boyish, the kind he rarely let out when adults were watching nowadays. He’d found an opening. A perfect opening to be stupid on purpose. He started laughing.
Not a normal laugh either, he went full dramatic, maniacal, the kind of laugh that belonged to villains in cheap stories and people who’d been awake too long.
“Ha… hah… HAHAHA—!” Ludger cackled, eyes bright with mock insanity.
Shera’s brow furrowed.
Ludger raised one hand theatrically despite being pinned and face-licked to death.
“You fell for my trick,” he declared. “Now that I have this power, I will take over the world!”
The dire wolf licked his face again. Ludger didn’t even pause.
“Then,” he continued, voice climbing like he was delivering a grand prophecy, “I will use the world to obtain even more power!”
Another lick.
“And then,” Ludger finished, laughing harder, “I will use that power to obtain even more power!”
He wheezed, still grinning like an idiot, while the wolf happily continued its assault as if it approved of global conquest and facial hygiene equally.
Shera just stared at him. Blank. Unmoved. The kind of stare that asked a single silent question:
Why am I bothering teaching this fool?
Ludger’s manic laughter faded into a cough. The dire wolf licked him again anyway. Shera’s eyes narrowed.
“…You’re done?” she asked.
Ludger’s grin widened. “Maybe.”
Shera rubbed her forehead once, slow, like she was trying to massage patience into her skull. Then she sighed.
“I taught you something rare,” Shera said flatly. “Don’t use it to become stupid.”
The dire wolf, as if offended by her tone, licked Ludger’s face one more time. Ludger muffled a laugh into fur.
“Well…” he said.
Ludger finally managed to get the dire wolf off him without starting a wrestling match.
He stood, brushed dirt off his cloak, tugged his arm guards back into place, and adjusted the straps that had shifted during the “pack bonding ritual,” as he was definitely going to call it later just to annoy people.
Then he looked at Shera.
“I’m going to see the next… old goat,” Ludger said.
He didn’t call them that with the same enthusiasm Sigrid did, but the words still came out.
“The one Sigrid mentioned,” he added, more politely.
Shera’s eyebrow lifted. “Of course you are.”
Ludger hesitated, then realized he hadn’t done something basic.
“…What’s your name?” he asked.
Shera stared at him like he should’ve asked that before growing a forest and taming a dire wolf in her yard, he tried, but she ignored him. Then she sighed.
“Shera,” she said.
“Ludger,” he replied automatically, then nodded once as if the exchange completed some invisible rule.
Shera crossed her arms again. “You learned the basics,” she said. “Barely. There’s a lot more you should learn if you want to call it properly.”
The dire wolf huffed beside Ludger, ears flicking as if it disliked being discussed like a technique.
Shera glanced at the wolf, then back at Ludger.
“But,” she added, tone flat, “if you’re leaving, that works for me.”
Ludger’s mouth twitched into a smirk.
“Come check Lionsguard sometime,” he said. “You’ll find it pretty interesting in a few months.”
Shera narrowed her eyes. “Why in a few months? Why not now?”
Ludger’s smirk deepened, the kind of expression that made adults immediately suspicious. He shrugged lightly, as if it was obvious.
“That,” he said, “is for you to find out.”
Shera stared at him, unimpressed in the way only someone with years of isolation could be unimpressed.
Then she snorted.
“Annoying boy,” she muttered.
Ludger’s smirk didn’t fade. He’d heard worse… And he was already turning north again, because the third “old goat” was waiting, and he didn’t have time to be fully polite even when he tried.
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