Ludger dusted his gloves off, his gaze still fixed on the engineers as the moonlight glinted faintly against the newly shaped road stretching up the mountain. Linne and Dalan were still processing his words, half convinced and half hesitant, engineers torn between numbers and instinct.

  He exhaled through his nose and took a few steps closer to them, voice calm but edged with that faint dryness that meant he was about to drive his point home.

  “If you’re that worried about long-term stability,” he said, “you can always reinforce the roads yourselves. Add a few runes along the main path, binding, compression, or stabilization circles every fifty meters. That would cut your risk to nothing, wouldn’t it?”

  The two looked at each other. Linne gave a slow nod, still thoughtful. “Yes… we could. It would stabilize the mana lattice across the stone.”

  Dalan scratched his chin. “It’s… possible. A little expensive, but possible.”

  “Then it’s not a problem,” Ludger said simply. “You get a perfect foundation. You can improve it however you like. Call it an investment in your own peace of mind.”

  The engineers fell silent again, clearly trying to calculate the scale of what he was offering, and failing to make it fit their usual logic. The silence dragged long enough for Kaela to smirk and mutter something about “math-heads overthinking again.”

  Ludger just sighed. He reached into one of his pouches, pulled out a single gold coin, and flicked it high into the air. It spun once under the firelight before landing neatly in his palm with a soft metallic clink.

  He held it up for them to see.

  “Money,” he said quietly, “has no value on its own.”

  Linne tilted her head slightly, her analytical mind pausing.

  “Its value,” Ludger continued, “comes from what you can do with it. The power to make things faster, easier. The power to save the only resource that actually matters, time.”

  He let the coin rest between his fingers, catching the firelight again. “You spend money to buy time. To move faster, build faster, reach farther. A coin sitting in your pocket, doing nothing… is just a piece of metal taking up space.”

  Kaela grinned, leaning her chin on her palm. “You sound like a philosopher now.”

  “Just being logical,” Ludger said flatly, flipping the coin once more before pocketing it again. “People hoard wealth thinking it keeps them safe, but all it really does is slow them down.”

  Kharnek let out a rumbling chuckle from where he was sharpening his axe. “He’s not wrong. A chest full of gold can’t swing a blade or build a wall.”

  Dalan finally laughed softly, rubbing his forehead. “You talk like someone who’s been rich and poor both.”

  Ludger’s smirk was faint but telling. “You learn faster when you’ve been both.”

  For a long moment, none of them said anything more. The fire crackled, the road gleamed faintly under the stars, and even the two Velis engineers, people used to thinking in diagrams and trade margins, were left staring at Ludger like they’d just been given a new equation they couldn’t quite solve.

  Linne finally broke the silence, voice quieter now. “Vice Guildmaster… you’re either going to make us wealthy beyond reason, or ruin every accountant in the League.”

  “Maybe both,” Ludger said dryly. “Depends who does the math first.”

  The morning broke cold and clear, a thin mist rolling down from the peaks above. The air carried the smell of stone and dust, crisp and sharp against the skin. The two carriages began their ascent as the first sunlight touched the slopes, their wheels creaking softly over the newly-forged road.

  To everyone’s quiet amazement, the climb was almost effortless. Even without the runic carriage pulling ahead, the horses moved smoothly, no slipping hooves, no jarring bumps, no loose stones tumbling beneath the wheels. The path that Ludger had created curved diagonally up the mountainside like a ribbon of sculpted steel, every meter of it precise and stable.

  Kharnek whistled low from his seat. “Smooth as glass,” he said, patting the reins. “I’ve seen roads on the capital rougher than this.”

  Linne leaned out of the runic carriage’s window, studying the seamless stretch of stone with wide-eyed fascination. “This is insane,” she murmured. “Not a single fault line, not a single crack. The compaction rate must be near perfect.”

  Dalan nodded beside her, still taking notes even as the carriage tilted upward. “Geomancy… I always thought it was mostly defensive. Walls, barriers, fortifications. I never imagined it could be applied with such structural precision.”

  Linne tapped the glass lightly, watching the road disappear into the next turn. “It’s alive, in a way. He’s not just molding stone, he’s communicating with it. The texture, the pressure balance… he must be reading the density in real time.”

  Dalan adjusted his spectacles, the faint glow of runic etching reflecting in the lenses. “Our runic craft can shape energy and matter, but it’s… mechanical. Sequential. We use formulas, layering symbols to make the world behave. What he does bypasses all that. It’s pure manipulation of the medium itself.”

  Linne folded her arms, still staring. “With the right rune matrices, we can create almost anything, powered vehicles, automated tools, weapon enchantments, but we still rely on static components. If the foundation shifts, the whole system collapses. Geomancy doesn’t seem to have that limitation.”

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  “Because he’s the foundation,” Dalan said, tone thoughtful. “He reads the flow of mana inside the mountain itself. It’s dynamic. Adaptive. If the terrain shifts, he shifts with it.”

  From further down the path, Kaela laughed as she watched Ludger from a distance. He was standing near the opposite slope already, his palms pressed lightly to the earth, sending quiet pulses through the mountain. The ground hummed in response, a living resonance that made the rocks tremble as dust fell from the cliffs.

  “See that?” Linne said, nodding toward him. “He’s clearing the far side before we’ve even finished climbing this one. He doesn’t even need to walk there, his mana just travels through the stone like water through a vein.”

  “Two more mountains after this,” Dalan murmured. “At this pace, he’ll cut our journey from four days to one.”

  Linne smiled faintly, her tone carrying reluctant admiration. “You know, Dalan… I think we’ve spent too long thinking of runes as the pinnacle of magical engineering.”

  Dalan chuckled softly. “You mean we’ve spent too long thinking we were smarter than everyone else.”

  “Same thing,” she replied with a smirk.

  Their carriage jolted slightly as it reached the upper ridge, the horses snorting but steady. The sun broke over the summit then, lighting the new road in gold and white. Below them, the slope wound perfectly toward the valley beyond, where Ludger was already reshaping the next stretch of terrain with quiet, methodical precision.

  Kaela stretched her arms, watching him from atop the carriage. “You two were right,” she called out with a grin. “He’s not a geomancer.”

  Linne blinked. “Then what is he?”

  Kaela’s grin widened. “A walking construction company with an attitude.”

  The engineers couldn’t even argue with that. They just kept watching as the boy on the mountainside bent the world itself into shape, turning cliffs into highways, one smooth motion at a time.

  By the time the third mountain fell behind them, the sun was nothing more than a dull red smear over the horizon. The air grew thicker, cooler, heavy with a faint mineral tang that clung to the lungs. Mist pooled between the rolling slopes below, dense, almost luminous in places where the light caught traces of moisture in the air.

  Ludger stood near the edge of the newly finished road, his boots grinding against the smooth stone as he studied the land ahead. The descent had gone as planned; no landslides, no fractures, not even a loose pebble. His geomantic senses stretched forward, mapping the terrain with faint pulses of mana.

  At first glance, the Velis League didn’t look all that different from the Empire’s borderlands. There were green and brown hills, patches of forest, the occasional glimmer of water where a river caught the light. But the air was different, thicker, carrying an odd static hum, as if every particle was charged with faint mana residue.

  He exhaled slowly. “So this is it.”

  Behind him, the two engineers stepped down from their carriage. Linne brushed the dust from her coat, her usual calm composure slipping into something close to pride. “Welcome,” she said, spreading her arms slightly. “To the Velis League.”

  Dalan nodded, pushing his spectacles higher on his nose. “It’s not much to look at from the border, but the deeper we go, the more refined it gets. The cities here are—”

  “Busy,” Linne interrupted with a small smile. “And dangerous, if you don’t know who’s buying and who’s watching.”

  Kharnek grunted. “Sounds like home already.”

  Ludger’s gaze didn’t move from the misted horizon. “Good,” he said flatly. “Then tell me the best route to the League’s capital. Or wherever this deal is supposed to happen.”

  The engineers shared a glance. For a heartbeat, their smiles didn’t reach their eyes.

  “Well…” Linne began, stretching the word. “There’s no rush, surely? The League has plenty to offer. It would be a shame to travel all this way and not see what makes our lands unique.”

  Dalan chimed in smoothly, “The workshops, the academies, the markets, runic marvels you won’t find anywhere in the Empire. You could learn a great deal here, Vice Guildmaster. Knowledge is worth more than any contract.”

  Kaela crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow. “You mean the kind of knowledge that makes us forget why we came here?”

  Linne smiled, ignoring the jab. “I simply mean there’s no harm in exploring. The League isn’t a place to rush through, it rewards curiosity.”

  Ludger turned to face them fully, his expression unreadable. “Curiosity kills time,” he said quietly. “And I value that more than money.”

  The engineers hesitated again. The air between them hung still, the faint hiss of the mist like a whisper between two worlds.

  Finally, Dalan forced a laugh, trying to recover his tone. “Of course, of course. Straight to business, then. But perhaps… after you see the first city, you’ll reconsider taking it slow.”

  Ludger didn’t answer. His eyes drifted back to the valley below, where the fog curled like a living breath. There was movement in it—faint, shifting, just enough to make him narrow his gaze.

  “Maybe,” he said finally. “But we’ll take the direct path first.”

  Kaela gave him a look that said she’d noticed the tension too. “Smart boy,” she muttered under her breath.

  As they began their descent into the mist, the faint hum in the air grew stronger, like the mountain itself was sighing in relief or warning. The Velis League might have been civilized on paper, but the land felt alive… and it was watching.

  Ludger glanced down the trail ahead. “Where’s the nearest village?” he asked abruptly.

  Dalan, still half-leaning out the carriage window to check his map, blinked. “Nearest settlement? About five kilometers east, maybe less. Why? Planning to make another… ‘instant fortress’?”

  Ludger gave him a flat look. “No. Because we’re not in the Empire anymore. I’m not shaping a stone house here and giving the locals a reason to think a geomancer from across the border is building bunkers in their territory.”

  That earned him a small, amused laugh from Linne, who adjusted her gloves and shook her head. “You make it sound like the League is full of bandits with torches. We don’t destroy things first and ask questions later, Vice Guildmaster. We’re civilized.”

  Kaela snorted. “Civilized doesn’t mean harmless.”

  Linne smiled thinly. “Harmless people don’t build empires, Miss Kaela.”

  “Or break them,” Maurien murmured from the rear.

  Dalan cleared his throat, tone shifting back toward reassurance. “She’s right, though. No one here will attack you for shaping earth. But they will ask questions. Dozens of them. Where you learned it. What school you studied at. Which branch of magic theory you use. Which guild you belong to.”

  Ludger’s eyebrow twitched. “That sounds worse than being attacked.”

  Kaela laughed out loud. “He’s not joking.”

  Dalan smiled faintly. “I’m serious. The League is built on curiosity — and competition. If you start raising walls out of the ground, every artificer within twenty kilometers will want to dissect your method. Politely, of course.”

  “Politely,” Ludger echoed, voice dry. “While they’re sketching rune diagrams on my walls and trying to measure my mana output?”

  “Exactly.”