The merchant’s breath hitched as the shadow loomed over him.

  He opened his mouth, maybe to plead, maybe to bargain.

  CRACK.

  Ludger’s boot slammed into the man’s shin with surgical precision. The bone snapped like dry wood.

  The merchant screamed, clutching his leg, only for Ludger to kick the other one before the sound even finished echoing.

  CRACK.

  Another clean break.

  The merchant collapsed fully, writhing, his voice echoing off the stone walls. “STOP—STOP—! I–I’LL TALK! I’LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING! JUST PLEASE—LET ME SPEA—”

  Ludger stepped forward.

  CRUNCH.

  His heel came down on the man’s hand, grinding the bones into the floor. The merchant shrieked, veins bulging in his neck.

  “WHY!? WHY AREN’T YOU LETTING ME TALK!?” he howled, voice cracking with panic and disbelief. “I–I CAN TELL YOU EVERYTHING! I—”

  He reached up instinctively with his uninjured arm. Ludger grabbed the wrist. And with a cold, mechanical twist.

  SNAP.

  The arm bent the wrong way. The merchant choked on his scream, convulsing as he curled around the ruined limb. Tears and snot streamed down his face. He looked up through blurry vision at the hooded figure towering over him.

  “W–Wh—why…? I… I can talk… I can tell you who’s paying… who’s in the capital… I–I can—”

  Ludger didn’t answer. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even acknowledge the words. He stepped to the other side. And before the merchant could beg again…

  SNAP.

  The second arm broke just as cleanly.

  The merchant collapsed into a trembling, broken heap, legs twisted, arms ruined, hand crushed, lying spread-eagled like a discarded puppet. He sobbed, coughing, trembling.

  “P…Please… why… won’t… you… let me… talk…?”

  Ludger finally crouched beside him, silent, mask reflecting the faint light of the fallen lanterns. And the merchant realized, far too late, that this wasn’t an interrogation. It was an execution taking its time.

  The merchant tried to crawl. He didn’t even know where, his shattered limbs dragged uselessly across the floor, leaving streaks of blood and sweat. His breath hitched, body convulsing with every movement. He could barely see, tears blurred everything into a trembling haze, but he knew one thing: He had to get away.

  He had to. A shadow dropped in front of him. Ludger crouched silently, blocking his escape.

  The merchant froze.

  Slowly, terrifyingly slowly, the cloaked figure lifted his head and looked straight into the merchant’s eyes. And in that moment, every ounce of pain vanished. Not because he healed. Not because of shock. But because pure, primal terror overwhelmed everything else.

  Those eyes… Those cold, steady, unblinking eyes…

  They weren’t angry. They weren’t excited. They weren’t even hungry for answers. They were done. Done with lies. Done with scum. Done with this entire operation.

  And the merchant understood, down to the marrow of his broken bones, that the person crouching in front of him wasn’t here to bargain.

  He wasn’t here for leverage. He wasn’t here for threats. He wasn’t here for deals. He was here to end things. The man’s voice broke into a whimper.

  “H–Help… help me…”

  No answer.

  Ludger’s mask revealed nothing, but his eyes were enough. Those eyes told the merchant exactly what was coming.

  More pain. More breaking. More punishment. And absolutely no escape.

  The merchant burst into sobs, body shaking uncontrollably. He understood now. He was going to die here. Slowly, unless he did something. His voice cracked as he tried to speak fast enough to outrun death:

  “I–I’ll talk! EVERYTHING! I—I swear! No lies! No lies, please! I—I’ll tell you all of it—EVERY NAME, EVERY ROUTE, EVERY COIN, PLEASE, just, just don’t, don’t hurt me again—!”

  He gasped, choking on his own breath.

  “If I lie—i-if I even stutter—you can—can do whatever you want—j-just—just let me speak—please—please—!”

  Ludger didn’t move.Didn’t blink. Didn’t even breathe loudly.

  But the merchant could tell, could feel, that the figure in front of him was listening. Judging. Measuring whether the truth was worth granting a quick death… or whether he’d be forced to peel the truth out piece by piece.

  The merchant sobbed harder, his entire body shaking. There was no negotiation here.

  There was only confession, and the faint, fading hope that answering quickly enough might buy him mercy. A mercy Ludger did not look inclined to give.

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  The merchant gulped, throat bobbing as he forced the words out through tears and broken breath. His voice trembled, not just from pain, but from the raw, suffocating pressure of Ludger’s silent presence.

  “V–Verk…!” he blurted, almost choking on the name. “It’s Verk—the head of everything! Verk Delvran… o-one of the most respected councilors in the Velis League!”

  He paused to suck in a shaky breath, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “He—he’s the one who started this network. The mushrooms, the trade routes, the buyers, every contact, every shipment, every bribe, it all leads back to him!”

  Ludger didn’t react. Not a twitch. Not a sigh. Not even a blink.

  The merchant swallowed hard and continued, rushing to fill the silence before pain returned.

  “He’s working with House Roderick… th-the nobles in the Imperial Capital. They, they want to weaken the Empire, s–shatter its influence piece by piece!”

  His voice cracked, but he kept speaking, desperate.

  “The plan is to undermine the imperial family… cripple their authority… and let the Senate take over little by little. But the Senate—th-the Senate is already under Roderick’s control! Them and three other houses, they’re moving pieces everywhere!”

  He coughed violently, blood dripping from his lips as he dragged himself backward an inch.

  “Verk and the Rodericks, they’re orchestrating assassinations. Not big, loud ones… n-no… strategic ones. Advisors, suppliers, officers… people t–that keep rival families stable. When they die, th–their houses stagger. Lose funds. Lose backing. Lose power.”

  His entire body shuddered.

  “It’s been going on for years…”

  Ludger tilted his head slightly, just enough to show he was processing every detail.

  The merchant felt his heart hammer harder.

  “And the draughts!” he cried. “The berserker draughts, they’re handling them too! Th–they supplied the northern tribes… on purpose! To make them addicts! To keep raids frequent enough that the Empire wastes soldiers and resources dealing with ‘barbarian problems’!”

  Ludger’s eyes narrowed faintly behind the mask.

  “And now, now they’re planning the same for the southern beastmen!” the merchant continued, voice strained. “They’ve been stocking up the mushrooms here, in Coria… loading the caravans little by little. They want the beastmen addicted too! Chaos on both sides, north and south!”

  Spittle flew from his mouth as he cried harder.

  “With the Empire dealing with two addictive-driven fronts… their economy weakens… their military depletes… the Emperor loses authority… and the Senate steps in!”

  He sobbed, shaking from the effort.

  “It—it’s a slow coup… a shadow coup… spanning years…”

  Another shaky breath. His voice lowered to a whisper, trembling like a leaf.

  “They… they think no one will see it until it’s too late.”

  The merchant dared to lift his head, pleading through his tears.

  “T-That’s everything… I swear it… I swear… n-no lies… please…”

  He trembled violently.

  “Please… just end it… quickly…”

  Ludger didn’t answer—not with words, not with breath.

  He simply tilted his head.

  Slowly.

  Softly.

  Like a predator examining the last twitch of cornered prey.

  The motion was small, subtle… but it carried something profoundly wrong. A quiet, curious sadism—the expression of someone who had seen far too much bloodshed for his age and was now deciding how much more to spill.

  The merchant froze. His pupils dilated. And then his eyes rolled back as his mind shut down entirely. He dropped limply to the floor, unconscious from pure, animal terror. Ludger exhaled sharply through his nose.

  “…I went too far.”

  His voice was a whisper, too soft to be amusement, too controlled to be guilty. Just an acknowledgment that he’d slipped. He crouched again, grabbed the man by the collar, and slapped him. Once. Twice. A third time—hard enough to rattle bone.

  The merchant jolted awake with a strangled gasp, shaking violently.

  Before he could speak, Ludger gathered a thin coil of wind as quietly as a breath and pressed it to his own throat. It vibrated his vocal cords, warping his childish voice into a deeper, gravelly rumble, a man’s voice. A terrifying man’s voice.

  “Where is Verk,” Ludger asked, no tone, no warmth, no hesitation, “tonight?”

  The effect was immediate. The prisoner gulped so loudly Ludger could nearly hear his esophagus pop.

  “In… in the north side of Coria,” the man stammered. “A-at his personal estate—no, fortress! It’s practically a fortress!”

  “Details.”

  “It, it’s huge! A manor reinforced with runic walls, and, and the guards…” His voice cracked. “Dozens of them. All elite. All equipped with top-grade runic armor and weapons,the kind money can’t normally buy!”

  Ludger waited.

  “And… and the golems…” The merchant’s voice dipped to a defeated whimper. “Runic golems, fortress models. Heavy plating. Shields. The kind made to fight mages, knights, armies…”

  He trembled so hard his teeth clattered.

  “No one can sneak in there. Not without being seen. Not without being killed.”

  The statement hung in the air. Ludger’s eyes, cold, unreadable behind the mask, did not shift.

  He simply stood up. As silent and smooth as a shadow. The merchant dared one last look at him and felt the chill of those void-black eyes boring into him. He whimpered.

  “Y-you’re… you’re not thinking of going there… are you?”

  Ludger didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The way the candles flickered as a draft followed him out of the room was answer enough.

  Ludger’s palm cracked across the man’s face with a sharp, wet smack. The merchant didn’t even scream, his eyes just rolled, body going limp as he slumped onto the warehouse floor like a sack of rotten grain. A tooth skittered across the stone. Blood dribbled from his lip.

  Unconscious. Finally. Ludger exhaled once, slow and steady, then crouched beside the body and grabbed the man’s chin with two fingers to tilt his head, making sure he was truly out. No faking. No twitching.

  Good. He released him and stood, the mist around him thinning into nothing. Then he placed a hand on his hip and tapped his masked jaw with one gloved finger.

  “…Now what.”

  The question wasn’t spoken with frustration, it was pure calculation.

  This idiot was one cog in a much larger machine. A mushroom buyer. A middleman. Someone trusted only because he was too cowardly to betray anyone important.

  Which meant…

  “There are more like him.”

  Many more. People who handled transport. Bribes. Falsified ledgers. Enchanted seals. People who bought materials for the draught. People who sold it. People who hid the cartels under the League’s nose. Picking them off one by one would destabilize the entire network…but it would also take time.

  Time he didn’t have. Verk, on the other hand?

  “Councilor… fortress… dozens of golems…” Ludger muttered under his breath, staring blankly at the wall. “Tch.”

  Even through the mask, his frown was obvious. A frontal assault would be suicide.

  Too many eyes. Too many sensors. Too many patrols. And runic fortresses weren’t like normal estates, they had their own mana fields, layered traps, internal alarms that could detect even slight disturbances.

  Even with his best stealth, even with his earth magic… getting in and out unseen would be almost impossible. Almost.