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

Chapter 613

As soon as Arslan reached the guild, he slowed, and then stopped.

The yard was too loud.

Not the usual noise of drills and shouted counts. This was a different kind of chaos, voices climbing over each other, trainees half-running, half-stumbling as they pointed toward the road like they’d seen a ghost.

“Over there!”

“By the gate—!”

“Is that… is that him?”

Arslan’s hand drifted toward his sword out of habit, not because he expected a fight, but because a crowd that sounded like this usually meant trouble was already walking in.

He followed their pointing. And his eyes opened wide.

Ludger was coming down the road toward the guild… Leading a small army of dire wolves. Not one. Not two.

A moving mass of fur and muscle and steam-breath, padding in disciplined, predatory silence like the road belonged to them. Dire wolves, big ones, and smaller wolves mixed in, flanking and trailing like an escort that didn’t need orders shouted to understand the formation.

The sight was so wrong in the middle of Lionfang that it took Arslan a heartbeat to make his brain accept it as real. Ludger walked at the front like this was ordinary. Not swaggering. Not showing off.

Just calm, hood up against the wind, eyes forward, as if he’d gone out to buy bread and came back with a pack of apex predators because the store had a sale.

A few guards on the wall leaned over, pale-faced. Merchants froze mid-step. A child squealed, half fear, half excitement, before being yanked behind a parent’s legs.

And the wolves? They didn’t snarl. They didn’t break formation. They simply moved, eyes scanning, ears twitching, bodies loose with the kind of confidence that came from knowing you were the danger in any room you entered.

Arslan swallowed. His first thought wasn’t even coherent.

What…?

His second thought landed like a punch.

Of course he did.

It truly looked like nothing was beyond his son. Give Ludger an impossible problem, tight deadlines, political knives, an empire trying to collar them, and in a few days he would return with an answer so blunt and effective it made everyone else feel stupid for not thinking of it first.

Arslan stood there, watching his thirteen-year-old son march a pack of wolves toward the Lionsguard like it was a supply delivery, and he felt his headache fade into something else entirely.

A mix of dread. And reluctant admiration. Because whatever Arslan had planned to say about “accepting the offer”… Ludger had apparently decided to negotiate with teeth.

When Ludger got close enough for Arslan to see the details, mud on his boots, a faint scratch on one bracer, the calm in his eyes like he’d just returned from a normal errand, Arslan finally found his voice again.

“…I didn’t know you went north,” Arslan said slowly, staring at the moving wall of fur behind him, “to reunite all the packs of dire wolves in the north.”

Ludger blinked once, then answered like he was correcting a minor exaggeration.

“These are just the closest ones I managed to find and convince,” he said.

Arslan’s eyes flicked back to the pack.

“Convince,” he repeated, the word coming out like it tasted wrong. Then he held up a hand as if physically stopping the next sentence. “No. Forget about it. I don’t want to even hear how you attempted that.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched faintly, almost amused.

Arslan kept staring at the wolves as they padded forward. They came in all sizes. Full-grown dire wolves with shoulders up to a man’s chest. Leaner wolves that moved like shadow knives. Thick-furred brutes with old scars and eyes that didn’t blink.

And cubs. Actual cubs. One small enough that, with the right kind of audacity, you could carry it like a hat. Arslan’s gaze snapped to Ludger’s head.

There it was.

A fuzzy, squinting little terror perched on top of Ludger’s head like it owned the place, tiny paws gripping fabric of his scarf while it looked down at the world with offended dignity.

Arslan opened his mouth, closed it, then pointed at the cub as if pointing would make the situation less insane.

“Is that—”

“Yes,” Ludger said immediately.

Arslan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course it is.”

The trainees nearby had stopped pretending to drill and were now watching like this was a festival. A few of them looked one bad decision away from trying to pet something that could remove their arm for entertainment.

Ludger turned his head slightly, eyes scanning the yard with the cold calculation of someone assessing how many idiots he might have to save today. Then he looked back at Arslan.

“I have to talk with Raukor,” Ludger said.

Arslan’s brows lifted. “Raukor?”

Ludger nodded once, already shifting his weight like he was preparing to leave again. “Yes. So I’ll be going.”

Arslan stared at him, at the boy, at the cub on his head, at the pack of wolves quietly waiting behind him like a private army.

“You just got here,” Arslan said, sounding faintly offended on principle.

Ludger’s expression didn’t change.

“Problems don’t wait,” he replied.

Then he stepped past Arslan like this was the most normal morning in the world, and the wolves flowed after him, silent, disciplined, and terrifyingly calm, while Arslan stood in the yard and wondered, not for the first time, whether his son had been born with an instinct for chaos or had simply decided the world would obey if he pushed hard enough.

Raukor frowned when Ludger arrived at his forge.

It was the usual beastman frown, heavy brow, ears angled back, the expression of someone who’d just smelled “trouble” walking in before the door fully opened.

Still, it only lasted a couple of seconds.

Then Raukor exhaled through his nose, pointed with a soot-dark finger toward a wooden box near the workbench, and went right back to what he’d been doing as if delivering absurd orders to a master smith was just another Tuesday. The box was packed with bracers. Not one pair.

A bunch.

Stacked, nested, sized roughly for guild members, simple, durable, reinforced where claws and impacts would land. Practical work. No ornamentation. Just function.

Ludger nodded once. “Thanks.”

Raukor grunted, which was about as close as he ever got to “you’re welcome.”

Ludger pulled the box closer and began laying the bracers out, spacing them in a neat line like he was preparing surgery tools. His hands moved automatically, cleaning, checking fit, checking reinforcement, mapping where runes would sit without compromising flex.

Because he’d spent a good part of the last two days thinking about the real problem. Not finding wolves. Not keeping them penned. Not even feeding them. Communication.

Bonded beasts were useless if your people couldn’t coordinate with them. Wolves didn’t take shouted orders like recruits. Dire wolves didn’t care about ranks. They cared about intent, emotion, pack language and mana-feel.

Ludger could brute-force it with Mana Pulse, reading the “shape” of Silva’s feelings the way Shera had shown him. But not everyone could do what he did.

Actually… He grimaced internally. He was pretty sure he was the only one who could do it like that. Most mages didn’t have the control. Most warriors didn’t have the sensitivity. Most people didn’t have the stubbornness to keep pulsing until the world started making sense.

Which meant if he wanted wolves integrated into the guild quickly, he needed a bridge, something that made the first step easy enough that even stubborn humans could do it without getting their faces removed.

And Ludger didn’t have countless skills and strange unlocks for no reason. He picked up a bracer, turned it over, and chose a clean strip along the inner forearm where it wouldn’t scrape, wouldn’t crack under impact, and wouldn’t be rubbed away by straps.

Then and began to write.

Runes formed under his hand, sharp, compact lines that carried function rather than beauty. A familiar pattern. A concept he’d forced into existence through practice and now could formalize.

Mana Pulse Rune.

Not a full mind-link. Not a magical leash. Something simpler.

A tool that would do what he did, send a controlled pulse outward, receive the reflected “feel” back, translate it into crude impressions the wearer could understand: threat, calm, hunger, trust, direction.

It would be far more efficient than his brute method. No wasted spill. No need to hammer the air with raw output.

But even so… Ludger’s eyes narrowed as he finished the last stroke and felt the rune settle into the metal like it had always belonged there. Only people with a certain large amount of mana would be able to use it often.

The bracer wasn’t a miracle. It was a training wheel.

A way to get recruits communicating with wolves at first, enough to stop friendly bites and start basic coordination.

After that? They’d have to learn the technique for real. They’d have to sharpen their control. Because if the guild was going to rely on feral allies, then those allies couldn’t be treated like tools you turned on and off with runes. The bond had to become a habit. Instinct. Pack.

Ludger set the bracer down, picked up the next one, and began inscribing again, hands steady, eyes calm, mind already moving ahead.

First: give them a voice the wolves could understand. Then: teach them to speak without crutches. And if the Regent wanted to measure Lionsguard with deadlines and rail lines? He could try.

Ludger held the bracer up to the forge light, turning it slowly and watching how the rune lines caught and released the glow. The mana channels looked clean—too clean, almost—like they were eager to be used.

He was checking the last stroke when Raukor finally spoke from behind the anvil.

“You going to let that many dire wolves stay around my forge forever?” the beastman asked, voice flat. “I’m not turning this place into a kennel.”

Ludger didn’t look up. “Don’t be impatient.”

Raukor’s ears flicked. “Boy…”

“Test first,” Ludger cut in, still calm.

He turned his head slightly and pointed at one of Raukor’s apprentices, a skinny kid with soot on his cheeks and the wide-eyed look of someone who’d been trying very hard not to breathe too loudly with predators nearby.

“You,” Ludger said. “Come here.”

The kid blinked, then jogged over like saying no was not an option.

Ludger held out the bracer. “Put it on.”

The apprentice swallowed, nodded, and slid it over his forearm. It fit snugly. The straps cinched with a soft leather creak. Ludger tapped the rune with a fingernail. “Pulse mana into that. Lightly. Don’t dump your whole pool.”

The kid hesitated, then obeyed.

A faint shimmer ran across the rune lines, like a heartbeat traveling through metal. The air around the bracer tightened, almost imperceptibly. Ludger nodded, satisfied, and then reached up to the top of his head .

The cub was still there, perched like a fuzzy crown with tiny paws gripping fabric. It yawned, blinked, and stared down at the apprentice as if judging his worth.

Ludger gently moved the cub forward, positioning it to face the kid directly. The apprentice flinched on instinct. His shoulders tensed, eyes widening for half a second as the little wolf’s gaze met his.

Then his expression changed.

The fear didn’t vanish, but it got replaced by something else, confusion, then concentration. His brows furrowed.

“…Can you feel this guy’s intentions?” Ludger asked.

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