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

Chapter 629

Ludger watched along the line like a quiet shadow, eyes scanning for the micro-failures that turned into funerals: a spear slipping, a foot catching on rubble, a trainee who overextended and forgot their flank.

An ant slipped through a gap near the right side, too fast, too low, claws angled for a boy’s knee.

Ludger was already there even while he wasn’t. He didn’t swing a weapon. He didn’t shout. He simply hit the air.

A palm strike snapped forward, reinforced by his Monk skills and the deep reserve of Vitality Well, stamina pressed into the motion until it became more than muscle.

The shock of it created a tight heat wave, a sudden pressure pulse that slapped the ant mid-lunge. Not fire. Not a spell. A blunt, invisible impact that turned its forward momentum into nothing. The ant jerked, unbalanced in mid-step, blades twitching.

The boy stumbled back in shock, and Selene arrived a heartbeat later to crush the creature’s head with her heel like she was stamping out an ember.

“Eyes up,” Ludger said to the boy, tone flat, as if he’d just corrected footwork in training.

The boy nodded so hard his helmet strap bounced.

Another ant tried to leap, climbing over bodies, using the pile of its dead like a ramp. It launched toward Aleia’s perch, claws raised to carve her off the rock before she could loose another arrow.

Ludger pivoted and struck again. Palm to air. The pressure wave hit the ant’s center mass and shoved it sideways mid-flight, slamming it into the dirt with a crunch that stole its breath and its rhythm. Aleia didn’t even look down, she shot it through the seam behind its head as if swatting an insect that had wandered into her line of sight.

Ludger kept moving. He didn’t chase kills. He prevented wounds. A trainee’s spear got stuck in chitin, Ludger cracked the joint with a short strike to free the weapon.

An ant’s claw scraped a shield edge and tried to slip around, Ludger’s heat wave interrupted its timing long enough for Harold to take the head clean off.

One of the younger recruits faltered, mana drained, Spinning Splash wobbling into mist, Ludger placed a hand on their shoulder for half a second, steadying them, grounding their breath, buying them just enough calm to step back instead of panic.

The swarm dwindled fast under coordinated violence. Even monsters ran out of bodies.

The last few ants fought like they couldn’t understand the concept of “losing.” They clicked and hissed, mandibles snapping at corpses and air, claws carving the dirt as they lunged… and then one final ant took a spear through its throat seam, staggered, and collapsed with a wet, ugly shiver.

Silence followed. Not peaceful silence. Battlefield silence. The kind where your ears ring because the world is too quiet after so much noise. The smell of death and blood hit like a wall, thick, coppery, mixed with the sour stench of ruptured insect innards and cracked chitin. It clung to the back of the throat and made swallowing feel wrong.

Ludger stood still for a moment, breathing steady, eyes scanning for movement. No twitching legs. No hidden flankers. Nothing. No human had died there. That fact was so rare it almost felt suspicious.

Harold turned slowly, taking in the cratered road, the heaps of broken ant bodies, the scattered weapons and splintered chitin shards. He looked at the line of trainees still standing, dirty, shaking, alive.

Then he raised his sword high overhead. And he roared. It wasn’t a victory cheer meant for pride. It was a release. A signal. A reminder that they were still breathing.

The veterans answered immediately, Selene shouting with feral joy, Aleia letting out a sharp, controlled yell that sounded like she was surprised it came from her, Cor lifting his staff slightly with a grunt that carried approval.

The recruits joined a heartbeat later, hesitant at first, then louder, voices cracking, fear turning into adrenaline and relief. And behind them, down the road… The refugees turned. They stopped running. They looked back at the broken swarm and the Lionsguard line still standing. For a moment they just stared, not fully believing.

Then someone shouted. Then another. Then a whole chorus of exhausted voices rose into the sunset, rough and trembling and grateful, as the truth finally reached them: They were no longer in danger. Not tonight. Ludger didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t lift a weapon to the sky. He didn’t scream his lungs raw just because the world had decided to give them one win.

He stood a step apart from the noise, letting everyone else take what they needed from the moment, relief, pride, the shaky proof that they weren’t helpless. It was good. It was necessary. And it was also… misleading. Because Ludger could feel it in his bones: this was just the beginning.

Five hundred monsters was a lot if you were a terrified guard line with no warning and no plan. But it wasn’t “half a city” a lot. It wasn’t “Rokram decimated” a lot. Not even close.

Five hundred didn’t erase streets and burn a manor and turn a population into a fleeing river. Five hundred didn’t explain the speed of collapse unless the city had been made of paper and panic, unless something bigger had been present, something smarter, something that didn’t just chase refugees like prey.

Something that directed the swarm.

Ludger’s eyes tracked the road back toward Fittar, toward the last wagons still rattling in, toward the dust trails of people who hadn’t made it yet. This fight had been them plugging a hole with their hands. Useful, yes. But if the pressure behind it was rising, hands weren’t going to be enough for long.

They’d done what they could for now. They’d bought time. Saved lives. Proved the line could hold. That mattered. But it didn’t solve the problem.

Even if monsters were spreading through the empire, Ludger couldn’t roam around like a lone hunter and “fix it.” Not anymore. Not with Lionfang depending on him, not with politics tightening, not with sealed labyrinths turning into unknown variables.

He wasn’t one man with power. He was a vice guildmaster with responsibilities. Which meant the answer wasn’t more heroics. The answer was coordination. Structure. Leverage. He would have to work with the entire Lionsguard, rapid response units, and so on. And he would have to work with other guilds too, whether they liked him or not. Even rivals. Even smug city guilds that still thought border towns were a cute story.

Because this wasn’t a problem you solved with a single strong fighter. It was a problem you solved with a network. A system. A realm that remembered how to act like it wanted to survive.

Ludger watched Harold roar and saw the recruits shouting like they’d just discovered what courage tasted like. He let them have it. Then he turned his gaze east, where the sun had dipped low and the horizon looked too calm for what it was hiding.

His expression stayed flat. But his mind was already moving. Five hundred was the appetizer. And somewhere out there, the thing that had opened Rokram wasn’t done eating.

An hour later, they were back inside Fittar’s walls.

The sun had dipped lower, painting the city from that orange-red light that made everything look warmer than it actually was to completely dark. The gates were still open, still swallowing refugees in ragged bursts, but the mood at the entrance had shifted, fear loosened just enough to make room for something louder. Celebration.

Not the polished kind nobles held with wine and speeches. The desperate kind common people threw when they realized they weren’t about to die today.

Word had traveled faster than the group’s return. By the time they reached the inner streets, people were already gathering. Someone beat on a drum. Someone else shouted names. A baker dragged out a basket of bread like the act of offering it could keep the monsters away by sheer stubbornness.

When Harold’s armored silhouette appeared under the lantern glow, the crowd surged.

Cheers rose like a wave. Hands lifted. Children climbed onto barrels for a better look. Refugees, still trembling, still dirty, turned and began to cry as they shouted thanks at strangers who had stood between them and the swarm. The city welcomed them like heroes.

Harold accepted it with a tired grin and a raised sword, more for them than for himself. Selene smirked and waved like she was taking applause after a good performance. Aleia kept her bow on her back and her eyes moving, acknowledging nothing but registering everything.

The other members? They stayed home-focused. Not because they were copying Ludger. Because they’d learned the hard way that Fittar didn’t love them.

This branch had been opened only a few months ago, and the local population had treated the Lionsguard like hired outsiders at best and trouble at worst. They’d complained about all kinds of things. Complained about drills. Complained about “kids with weapons” and “foreigners with strange magic.” They’d enjoyed the benefits, safer roads, better trade, labyrinth access, but resented the presence.

So the new branch members didn’t expect warmth now. The veterans only responded out of necessity. They didn’t need it. They hadn’t built their pride on applause. They’d built it on surviving long enough to earn the right to go home.

The group pushed through the crowd toward the branch hall and the command yard beyond it, letting the city shout itself hoarse behind them. Cor didn’t waste time.

The old sage’s expression remained calm, but his eyes were sharp in a way that told everyone this wasn’t over, it had just changed shape. He planted his staff once in the yard.

Thunk.

The sound cut through the last of the excitement like a knife.

“Listen,” Cor said, voice carrying without shouting. “One swarm made it this far. That means others can. We don’t wait for the next wave to reach the walls.”

He looked over the gathered faces, the handful of branch members who’d been holding the city together since the breach.

“We split,” he continued. “Small groups. Fast. Quiet. Check the closest villages. Check roads, fields, wells, and livestock pens. If you see signs, tracks, missing animals, strange burrows, mark it and pull back. Don’t chase alone. Don’t be reckless.”

Selene snorted quietly like she wanted to argue with the concept of not being brave. Cor’s gaze flicked to her.

“Even you,” he added, dry as old bones.

Selene grinned. “Fine. I’ll be tactically brave.”

Cor ignored her.

He started assigning names and pairings with the ease of someone who’d done this before, balanced teams, a healer where possible, a tracker, someone with reach, someone with control. Recruits were paired with veterans. The youngest were given simpler routes. No one was allowed to wander off because they “felt lucky.”

Orders were short, clear, and ugly in their simplicity:

Find the danger. Report it. Don’t die doing it.

As the groups broke off, Ludger watched the yard empty in controlled streams, people moving like they had a purpose instead of panic. The celebration outside kept going, loud and bright and hopeful. Inside the branch hall, the mood stayed hard and practical. Because the next few nights… No one would be able to sleep much. Not with refugees still arriving. Not with sealed labyrinth monsters roaming the land. Not with the taste of victory still in the air, because victory was the most dangerous moment of all, when people wanted to believe the worst had passed.

Ludger didn’t believe in that kind of comfort.

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