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Ludger remained still.
Hroth pointed toward the ground.
“When you take a step, there are three broad parts. First, your body commits weight. Second, your leg pushes. Third, the ground returns force and you move.” He looked at Ludger. “So the simplest use of this principle is to make the body slightly lighter during the first part, then amplify the push during the second.”
He demonstrated. Mana gathered around his lower body in a faint blue shimmer, much calmer than in battle. He took a single step forward. But it was wrong in a very clear way.
Not clumsy, wrong in the magical sense.
His body seemed to glide farther than a normal step should have allowed, the distance stretched by clean efficiency rather than raw speed. There was no burst, no explosion, no dramatic aura. Just a simple movement that covered more ground than it had any right to.
“That,” Hroth said, “is the easiest version.”
Ludger stared at the spot where the step had ended. Hroth continued in detail.
“At the beginning, reduce the burden slightly. Don’t think ‘make myself weightless.’ That’s too crude. Think ‘make the body easier to move for an instant.’ Then, as the foot pushes, direct mana through the leg and emphasize forward release. Not everywhere. Not all at once. From the hip down through the thigh, knee, calf, and into the contact point.”
He demonstrated again, slower this time.
“Commit.”
He shifted.
“Lighten.”
There was the faintest shift in the mana around his torso and hips.
“Push.”
The mana tightened down one leg.
“Release.”
He stepped, and again the motion stretched unnaturally smoothly into extra distance. Ludger watched every part of it.
The mana wasn’t flooding the body at random. Hroth was threading it through key points in sequence, shaping a temporary change in how the movement behaved rather than simply empowering the whole thing equally.
That was why it resembled runes. Not because of symbols. Because it was logic arranged in parts.
“Try it,” Hroth said.
Ludger did. His first attempt was wrong immediately.
He moved mana through the legs and reduced too much burden too fast, which made the first shift of weight feel loose and unstable. His second phase then pushed too hard too broadly, causing the step to become forceful but wasteful, more like a mana-assisted lunge than the controlled glide Hroth had shown him.
Hroth watched with folded arms.
“You’re pushing like a geomancer,” he said. “Too much brute certainty. Stop trying to overpower the movement and actually alter it.”
Ludger gave him a look, but adjusted. Second attempt.
This time he held the body more stable and applied a subtler lightening effect first. Better. The push phase was still rough, though, too immediate and too concentrated near the lower leg rather than starting through the hip and flowing down cleanly.
He took the step. It was shorter than Hroth’s version, but smoother than the first try.
“Closer,” Hroth said. “You understood the first half. The second half still looks like you’re trying to kick the world.”
Ludger ignored the comment and tried again. He stood still for a second this time, eyes narrowed, feeling the structure of his own body. Weight. balance. pressure through the feet. the way the hips initiated movement before the leg truly drove. Then he added mana in layers.
First, a subtle reduction in burden. Not making himself light, but making motion begin easier. Then the push. Not from the calf alone. From the whole chain.
Hip. Thigh. Knee. Calf. Foot. Forward release. He stepped.
And this time, the motion clicked.
It wasn’t flashy. But it was clean. The step carried him farther than it should have, with a smoothness that made the extra distance feel stolen rather than forced. There was no stumble, no waste, no obvious jolt of mana breaking the movement apart.
Ludger stopped and looked down once. He had done it. Hroth’s brow lifted faintly.
“Well,” he said, “that was annoyingly fast.”
Ludger ignored him and repeated the step.
Again. Again. Each repetition sharpened the feel of it in his body until the logic began settling into place as something practical rather than theoretical.
Then the System reacted.
A familiar shift ran through him.
A slight internal weight, like something invisible had dropped into alignment. Ludger’s eyes sharpened at once.
He checked.
Class unlocked: Vector Sorcerer (+08 INT, + 08 DEX, +08 WIS)
Skill gained: Weighted Step Lv 1
For a second, even Hroth looked mildly offended.
“You got something from that?”
Ludger read through the sensation of it, then said, “Yes.”
That answer came with just enough satisfaction to make Hroth click his tongue.
Ludger moved again, activating the new step with the System’s support now threaded through his understanding. The effect was clearer this time. Easier. Cleaner. The mana aligned itself more naturally to the logic he had just grasped, confirming he had truly crossed the threshold instead of merely copying a trick.
He stopped and exhaled once. So that confirmed it. The principle worked. And more importantly, it was something he could build on. Hroth looked at him for a long moment, then shook his head.
“You really are a disgusting little genius.”
Ludger ignored that too. His eyes were already distant in the way they became when his mind started assembling future uses faster than was probably healthy. Steps. Strikes. impact timing. defensive anchoring. launch angles. combinations with Wind Step. maybe even geomancy-assisted motion if he shaped the terrain to suit the property shifts.
Hroth saw the look and immediately regretted helping.
“No,” he said at once. “Whatever nightmare you’re designing in your head right now, stop.”
Ludger’s mouth twitched slightly.
“No.”
Ludger didn’t disagree. He looked toward the distant glow of the capital, then toward the darker stretch where the nearest town lay.
“It’s time to leave,” he said.
Hroth raised a brow.
Ludger’s eyes remained fixed on the horizon.
“I can sense people coming from both directions. From the capital and the nearest town.” His expression stayed flat. “That maniac made too much noise and too much light with his magic.”
Hroth glanced around the ruined grove, the scorched trees, the broken ground, the lingering smoke.
“Fair.”
Then, before Hroth could ask what exactly Ludger intended to do about the body, the battlefield, or the obvious problem of a dead pyromancer lying in the open, Ludger moved first.
He placed a hand toward the ground and sent mana downward.
The earth beneath Hans’s corpse groaned, then split open into a dark hole leading down toward the ruined hideout below. It wasn’t a neat shaft. It was a forced connection, torn through layers of soil and broken stone until the opening linked back into the collapsed underground structure.
Without ceremony, Ludger grabbed Hans’s body and tossed it in.
The corpse vanished into the dark.
Then Ludger sealed it.
Stone shifted. Earth folded. More of the already damaged hideout collapsed inward under his control, the broken sections caving further on themselves as he forced ceiling and walls to crush what remained below. He didn’t stop there. Once the internal structure had been wrecked enough to bury the corpse deep, he redirected water through the same channels he had used earlier.
The cavity filled.
Mud, debris, and cold water rushed together underground, swallowing the remains of the pyromancer and the last useful shape of the hideout alike. By the time Ludger finished, the grove floor had already sealed back over with packed earth and broken stone, leaving little more than a scarred patch of disturbed terrain where the opening had been.
He straightened.
“Done.”
Hroth stared at him for a second.
Then he let out a slow breath and said, “You are truly a monstrous kid.”
Ludger didn’t disagree.
They split paths there.
Hroth disappeared back into the dark like he belonged to it, his presence fading between the trees until the night swallowed him whole. Ludger didn’t waste time watching for long. The moment they separated, he turned north and began moving at speed.
He wanted to show himself there as soon as possible.
The faster he returned, the better.
Tonight had been too noisy, too bright, too destructive. Hans had turned the outskirts into a spectacle with all that flame, and sooner or later people would start trying to piece together what had happened. Patrols, scouts, nervous locals, the usual scavengers who fed on rumors. Ludger had already buried the most dangerous parts of the scene, but that didn’t mean questions wouldn’t follow.
So he needed an alibi.
A good one.
Not some flimsy excuse made after the fact, but his own visible presence in the north, working, moving, existing where people expected him to be. The kind of thing that made the timeline uncomfortable for anyone trying to connect him to the mess near the capital.
As he ran through the underground tunnels again, the fight replayed in his mind with irritating clarity.
Hans had died. That was good. Necessary. But the fight itself had made one thing painfully obvious. Even after fighting the giant sea monster, Ludger was not unbeatable against humans.
That truth sat in his mind with cold weight.
A giant monster was terrifying in one way, huge power, overwhelming mass, straightforward destruction, but humans were troublesome in another. Smarter. dirtier. less honest in the way they fought. A creature like the sea monster crushed what stood in front of it. A man like Hans poisoned the air, controlled space, used relics, baited reactions, and layered combat experience over madness until every exchange became ugly.
And Hans had been only one human.
One dangerous bastard, yes, but still just one.
Ludger’s expression hardened slightly as he kept moving.
The problem became worse when he considered the limits he had placed on himself.
He had spent that entire fight hiding most of his abilities.
Because he had to.
Too close to the capital. Too many eyes that might arrive later. Too many reasons to avoid revealing things that should remain attached only to rumors, if that. He hadn’t fought freely. He had fought selectively, holding tools back, narrowing his visible options, and trying to win while looking smaller than he really was.
That was useful.
It was also dangerous.
Because hiding power was only smart if the power you did use was polished enough to carry the burden.
And tonight had shown him exactly where that burden became uncomfortable.