A note from Comedian0
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Ludger needed to train his basic classes more. Not the spectacular ones. Not just the overwhelming options that ended fights when he stopped caring who saw.
The basic ones. The simple foundations.
Movement. weapon skills. body reinforcement. hunting instincts. stamina usage. small tactical skills that looked normal enough no one would panic if he used them repeatedly. The sort of classes he could stack, combine, and rely on while keeping the more ridiculous parts of himself under wraps.
Because that was the life he had chosen for now. He wanted to hide things. A lot of things.
His full geomancy, certain runic tricks, the stranger edges of his growth, the methods better left unseen until the right moment. If he intended to keep doing that, then his visible toolkit had to become much stronger than it was now. Strong enough that even while holding back, he could still kill people like Hans without the fight turning into an exhausting mess.
Courier. Assassin. Hunter. Warrior. The newer classes mattered more now than they had a few days ago. They were not just extra tools. They were camouflage. A way to become dangerous through means others could understand, while the deeper parts remained hidden underneath.
Ludger exhaled slowly through his nose as he ran. That meant more training. More refinement. More time spent making the ordinary parts of himself terrifying enough that no one would notice how much worse the hidden parts really were. And honestly, that suited him fine.
Because if tonight had taught him anything, it was that there was still plenty of room to become more troublesome. As Ludger kept running north, his thoughts gradually settled into something simpler. It was time to do some serious grinding inside a labyrinth for a change. Not politics. Not nobles. Not spies, cursed illnesses, and buried family fires. A labyrinth. Something direct. Something honest enough to punch. The thought alone felt strangely refreshing. He needed it.
Not because he was tired in the simple sense, but because too much of his recent work had demanded caution, masks, and half-measures. Too much subtlety. Too much thinking around corners instead of breaking through them. Useful, yes. Necessary, absolutely. But it had left the rougher, more straightforward side of his growth lagging behind.
That needed to stop.
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly as he ran. He wasn’t planning to leave the labyrinth until he mastered his Pugilist class. And perhaps even his Monk class as well.
If he was going to keep hiding larger pieces of his strength, then the visible part needed to become monstrous enough on its own. Fists. body control. endurance. close-range pressure. efficient killing power without flashy methods or suspiciously convenient tricks. He wanted those foundations sharpened until even holding back still felt overwhelming to most opponents.
A labyrinth was perfect for that.
Continuous combat. repeatable enemies. pressure without politics. Room to train movement, timing, stamina, impact conditioning, and class synergy over and over until the body stopped needing to think before doing the right thing.
Good.
Very good.
By the time he came back out, he wanted his fists to feel less like a fallback and more like a proper answer to almost anything alive and stupid enough to stand in front of him.
And if the labyrinth suffered for that decision, then that was its problem.
— —
From Arslan’s perspective, Ludger’s return felt wrong from the very first second.
It wasn’t anything obvious at first glance.
His son walked in under his own power. No limp worth mentioning. No pale face. No half-dead look dragged back from some suicidal stunt. On the surface, he looked almost normal, too calm, too quiet, but that in itself wasn’t unusual for Ludger.
What hit Arslan first was the smell.
Blood and burned flesh.
Not the faint trace of monster blood that clung to a hunter after a labyrinth run. Not the stale metallic scent that followed a few cuts and a messy fight. This was heavier. Fresher. Mixed with smoke, damp earth, and the kind of scorched stink that made Arslan’s instincts tighten before his mind caught up.
His eyes narrowed immediately.
Ludger had barely stepped properly inside before Arslan asked, “What did you do this time?”
Ludger looked at him with that same unreadable little face of his and answered, “I just punished some evildoers.” That was the sort of sentence that would have sounded absurd coming from almost anyone else. From Ludger, it was somehow worse. Because he said it in the same tone someone might use to explain they had gone to buy bread.
Arslan stared at him for a moment, trying to judge how much blood actually belonged to his son and how much belonged to everyone else unlucky enough to be involved in whatever “punishment” meant tonight.
Elaine had noticed the smell by then too.
Arslan saw it in the way her expression changed, subtle, but sharp enough that anyone with half a brain would start praying for the safest possible version of events.
“What happened?” she asked.
Ludger did not look away from either of them, but something in his face flattened even more.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
That baffled Arslan immediately. And it baffled Elaine even more. Because Ludger never said that to her. Not like that.
He could be evasive. Irritatingly so. He could downplay things, skip details, pretend some absurdly dangerous event had been less troublesome than it actually was. But with Elaine, he usually answered. Even when reluctant, even when annoyed, even when trying to soften the worst parts, he answered.
This time he simply refused. Arslan felt a cold little knot form in the back of his mind.
Elaine didn’t push right away, perhaps because she understood the same thing he did, that this wasn’t normal for Ludger. If anything, the refusal itself said more than a detailed report would have. It meant whatever he had done had crossed into a category he did not want in the house. Not verbally. Not near them.
That bothered Arslan more than any visible wound would have. Because wounds he understood. Silence was trickier. Silence meant something had reached into the boy’s head and stayed there.
Arslan watched Ludger more closely over the next hours, expecting some delayed sign of injury, strain, or hidden damage. There were traces, if one knew where to look. A certain tightness in the way he shifted his weight once or twice. The faint stiffness of someone who had healed enough to move, but not enough to forget the pain. None of it was dramatic. All of it was suspicious.
Still, Ludger refused to elaborate. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, he became even more irritating. For the next three days, he worked around the city almost nonstop.
Arslan saw him moving from task to task with only a few breaks in between, throwing himself into ordinary work with a focus so relentless it stopped feeling ordinary very quickly. Meetings. inspections. logistics. checking on repairs. going through people, supplies, notes, routes, whatever needed his attention. He moved through the city like a boy trying to outrun his own thoughts by burying them under labor.
That, too, felt wrong. Ludger was hardworking. Nobody would ever question that. But this was different. This had the look of someone forcing himself to stay in motion because standing still for too long might leave room for something unpleasant to catch up.
Arslan noticed. So did Elaine. Neither said it directly. Then Ludger vanished into the frost labyrinth. Not for a standard run. Not for a scheduled operation. Not to escort others. He went in with the clear intention of staying there.
Three days passed. And he still had not returned. By that point, Arslan was thoroughly done pretending not to be bothered.
He stood on the wall more than once during those days, looking toward the cold north with his arms folded, jaw tight, trying to decide whether Ludger’s absence should be treated as strategic training, personal space, or one more sign that something had gone very wrong beneath the boy’s calm face.
The frost labyrinth was not a place one disappeared into casually. Certainly not alone. Not for days.
Ludger was strong. Arslan knew that better than most. Absurdly strong, in fact. Strong enough that thinking too long about the things that boy could do sometimes made Arslan feel like the title of father had become increasingly decorative over the years.
But strength wasn’t the point. Not entirely. Even a strong person could use a labyrinth the wrong way. As punishment. As a distraction. As somewhere to hit things until the noise in their head went quiet.
That possibility bothered Arslan far more than any monster in the labyrinth itself. Because he knew that impulse. Too well.
And the more he thought about Ludger coming home soaked in blood, refusing to speak, then working himself ragged before throwing himself into a frozen death hole for three days, the less any of it looked accidental.
It looked deliberate.
Like the boy had come back carrying something ugly, taken one look at the walls of home, and decided he would rather bleed it out into stone and monsters than let any of it touch the people inside.
That thought sat badly in Arslan’s chest. Worse than badly. Because it was exactly the kind of thing Arslan himself might have done years ago. And that made it far too easy to understand. Which, in its own way, made it worse.
That night, after dinner, Arslan and Elaine finally had a moment alone.
The twins had fallen asleep in their room not long ago, and the house had settled into that quieter kind of nighttime stillness that only came after children stopped moving and the work of the day loosened its grip a little. A lamp burned low nearby, casting warm light over the room, but neither of them looked particularly relaxed.
Elaine was the first to speak.
“What do you think of Ludger’s actions?” she asked. Then, after a short pause, she added, “And his words.”
Arslan leaned back slightly and tried, for one brief and foolish moment, to blunt the tension the way he usually did.
“Maybe he found some girlfriends somewhere in the Empire,” he said. “And he doesn’t want his mother getting overprotective again like before.”
He meant it lightly. But the moment he saw Elaine’s face, he knew the joke had landed exactly where it shouldn’t. She did not look amused. Not angry in the explosive sense, just serious enough that any further attempt at humor would have been the act of a man begging to be hit with a chair.
Arslan sighed.
“All right,” he muttered.
He ran a hand over his face and let the joking tone drop away.
“In all honesty…” He paused, searching for words that wouldn’t sound like excuses even if they partly were. “Ludger is already fourteen.”
Elaine said nothing, but she kept watching him. Arslan continued more slowly.
“There are things he probably just doesn’t want to share.” His gaze lowered for a moment toward the table before lifting again. “Not because he doesn’t trust us. Not necessarily. Just…” He exhaled through his nose. “Because he’s already a man at heart.”
That was the part that made all of this hard to talk about.
Ludger did not think like a normal boy his age. Hadn’t for a long time now. Arslan didn’t know when exactly that truth had stopped feeling strange and started feeling merely obvious, but it had happened. Somewhere between walls being raised, people being led, enemies being judged, and impossible decisions being made with that calm little face of his, Ludger had become someone who carried himself like a grown man forced into a smaller body rather than the other way around.
And men like that were difficult.
Especially when it came to pain.
“People like him…” Arslan said, then corrected himself with a faint grimace, “People like us, maybe, don’t always want to share our burdens with others.”