Ludger asked a few more questions, details about the hand signals the Brotherhood used, how they tested recruits for silence, what punishments were given for failure, and how often new members were cycled through different districts. Neither spy had anything deeper to offer, but the structure of their training, the tasks assigned to them, and the basics of criminal infiltration were enough for Ludger to form a clearer picture of the organization.

  And apparently… Enough for the System to form one too. A soft pulse, like a flicker of mana behind his eyes, caught Ludger’s attention. A notification window slid into his vision with that familiar quiet chime.

  [New Class Unlocked: Bandit Lv. 1]

  Bonus per Level: +4 DEX, + LUK

  Skill Acquired: [Pickpocket Lv. 1]

  Allows silent theft of small objects from a target. Effectiveness scales with Dexterity and Luck. Failure increases target suspicion.

  Ludger stared at the notification for a long moment. Then another moment. Then he exhaled slowly through his nose.

  He was not proud, at all, to have a “Bandit” class appear on his status page. Not even a little. In fact, he was pretty sure Gaius or Arslan would choke if they ever found out. The idea of a Lionsguard vice guildmaster having “Pickpocket” as a skill felt… wrong. Like the System was playing a joke on him. He dismissed the window with a flick of his fingers, face deadpan.

  “Well,” he muttered, “better than nothing.”

  It was another tool. Another angle. Another way to exploit weakness if needed. Not honorable. Not impressive. Not even something he wanted to use. But Ludger wasn’t in the business of caring about honor when it came to protecting Lionfang and his people.

  Tools were tools. A knife could cut bread or a throat. A skill could protect the innocent or rob a fool. He didn’t like the class. But he nodded once. Accepting it. Because in the end… if it helped him crush the Iron Moth Brotherhood, and if it helped him keep Viola safe during the birthday celebration… It was worth it.

  Ludger stood over the two captured spies, arms folded, letting the silence press down on them like a physical weight. The dim lantern light flickered across their bruised faces, casting long, sharp shadows across the stone walls of the Break Room. Both men waited for his verdict with the dread of men who had already accepted death as the logical outcome. Ludger studied them for another moment, then spoke with the calm certainty of someone who had already made up his mind.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he said.

  Their bodies tensed immediately, breath catching in their throats. For a moment, neither dared to move, unsure if he meant something better or something worse. Ludger met their eyes one after the other, his expression flat and unreadable.

  “I won’t kill you.”

  If he had stabbed them, the reaction might have been less dramatic. Their eyes widened, but not with relief. More like shock, confusion, fear that the reprieve was only a setup for something far worse. And they weren’t wrong. Ludger’s voice carried no softness, no suggestion of mercy. It was merely a statement of fact.

  “You’re going to help me crush the Iron Moth Brotherhood.”

  Whatever lingering hope they might have felt instantly curdled. The first man’s jaw slackened in horror; the second visibly trembled. Neither looked remotely relieved. To them, Ludger’s promise of survival felt more like a sentence, one that would stretch painfully rather than end quickly. The nightmare wasn’t ending. It was evolving.

  Ludger crouched down, bringing himself to their level. His gaze was steady, cool, and thoughtful, like he was considering dangerous tools rather than human beings. “I’m going to let you go,” he said, speaking slowly enough that the meaning sank in fully. “You’re going to walk out of here. You’ll return to the tavern. You’ll continue exactly what you were doing before.”

  He tapped the first man’s forehead lightly.

  “You’ll watch the guards. You’ll track the patrols. You’ll pretend to be clueless little rookies. Exactly what your Brotherhood expects.”

  The men exchanged a terrified glance, neither of them understanding how they had ended up in a situation somehow worse than immediate execution. Ludger straightened, dusted his hands, and spoke again, this time in a tone that was quiet, almost conversational, but sharpened at the edges like a knife.

  “But listen very carefully. If either of you tries to run… if you lie… if you send the wrong message… if you even think about doing something stupid or clever…” He turned his head slightly, just enough for them to see the faint glint in his eyes. “I will know.”

  The earth cocoons trembled as the two men froze in perfect terror.

  “And if you betray me,” Ludger continued, “you won’t end up back here. You’ll end up somewhere worse. Far worse.” He paused. “Don’t give me a reason to enjoy killing you two.”

  The stone bindings began loosening around their bodies as Ludger flicked his fingers. They didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t dare speak. The promise of freedom felt like a razor pressed against their throats.

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  “In three days, you’ll deliver your report to the Brotherhood exactly as planned,” Ludger said as he turned to leave. “Meanwhile… I’ll be watching. And listening.”

  He walked toward the exit, the lanternlight catching the edge of his silhouette. Behind him, both spies shook with a dread so deep it seemed to anchor them to the floor. Ludger didn’t look back when he added, in a tone that somehow made their blood run colder:

  “Make the right choices, or your next bed won’t be a tavern room.”

  Before either man could gather the courage to breathe wrong, Ludger flicked his fingers. Two stone spheres formed above their heads, clean, smooth, heavy, and dropped forward with perfect precision.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  The impacts snapped both spies’ heads back, their eyes rolling white as consciousness vanished instantly. Ludger didn’t even bother watching them fall limp against the loosened earth; he had places to be, preparations to make, and no reason to waste another second on them tonight.

  By the time the two men finally came to, the sun was already high. A thin blade of noon light cut through the dusty basement window of the tavern, landing across their tangled, miserable forms. They both groaned at the same time, rolling onto their sides with the sluggishness of men who had been clubbed repeatedly.

  And in their case, that wasn’t far from the truth. The first spy pressed a shaking hand to his face, and hissed when pain flared across the entire side of it. The flesh was swollen, bruised, hot to the touch. The other man mirrored him, gingerly pressing his own cheek, only to flinch at the throbbing that pulsed angrily beneath the skin.

  “…It wasn’t a nightmare,” the first whispered.

  The second spy nodded weakly. “No. If it was, we wouldn’t have the same dream.”

  They sat upright slowly, wincing as their heads pounded. The room was the same one they’d rented, dusty floor, cheap beds, stale air, but the atmosphere felt different now. Heavy. Smothering. Like the walls themselves were listening.

  The first spy swallowed thickly. “W-What do we do?”

  The second glanced around the dim room, as if expecting Ludger to materialize out of the shadows. “We… we do what he said,” he muttered. “We have to. We don’t… we don’t have a choice.”

  The first man hugged his knees, trembling. “Do you feel that?”

  The other shut his eyes, sensing the space around them, the subtle pressure that prickled along the skin, like frost crawling over their spines. A cold, oppressive aura, faint but unmistakable, seeped through the floorboards and the air itself.

  Ludger wasn’t there. But somehow, his presence was. Watching. Listening. Judging.

  “I… I think he left something,” the second whispered, voice hollow. “A spell. Or a mark. Or maybe it’s just… him. I don’t know. But—” He shuddered visibly. “I can feel him.”

  The first spy nodded quickly, eyes wide. “Me too…”

  Silence settled heavily between them. Then understanding struck both of them like a hammer. There was no running. There was no hiding. There was no betrayal.

  Ludger had tied invisible chains around their necks, not magical ones, but psychological and spiritual ones. The kind that came from facing a twelve-year-old monster who could snap both their lives without breaking a sweat.

  They exhaled shakily, the weight of their situation crushing whatever scraps of defiance or hope they might’ve clung to last night.

  “…We do the job,” the second man whispered.

  “We report like normal.”

  “And then we pray he never shows up again.”

  Neither of them believed that prayer would be answered. But they had no other choice.

  Ludger remained in the Break Room long after the spies had been released, his back resting against a smooth slab of stone he had shaped into a makeshift chair. His eyes were half-closed, his breathing steady, but he wasn’t resting in any meaningful sense. Thin threads of mana spread outward from him, seeping into the walls, the ceiling, the earth beneath Meronia like roots burrowing quietly into soil. Through those threads, he could feel the world around him in a way few mages ever could.

  He couldn’t hear the spies’ voices through the floor of the tavern, the sound didn’t travel that cleanly, but he didn’t need speech to understand them. Seismic Sense painted their panic for him in the subtle vibrations they sent through the stone. The sharp tension in their shoulders, the frantic pacing, the uneven shifts of weight as they argued with themselves… it all rippled downward like tiny signals in a web he controlled. Fear was easy to read. Especially when it came from people who had watched him dissect their resolve piece by piece.

  A faint, cold satisfaction flickered through Ludger. They were terrified, and they were supposed to be. They could feel the weight of something watching them, not literally, but spiritually. A pressure in the air, a chill along their spines. The unmistakable sense of a predator lurking just out of sight. They wouldn’t know it was simply the reach of his mana tightening around them like invisible chains, but it didn’t matter. Fear keeps people predictable. Fear kept people obedient.

  And Ludger didn’t even need to move to kill them. One thought, just a single impulse, and the earth beneath their beds could spike upward, swallow them, crush their ribs, or drag them screaming into the ground. The ease of that was what they were sensing, even if they didn’t understand the mechanism behind it. To them, it felt supernatural. To Ludger, it was simply geomancy.

  He exhaled, slow and controlled, letting his eyes finally open. He already knew what he would do next. Watching those two fools was merely the first step. He would monitor them through the vibrations they made, track them as they followed their pathetic routine, and make sure they delivered their report to the Brotherhood exactly as expected. No deviations, no surprises, no desperate attempts to escape the fate he’d laid out for them.

  Once the report was dropped at the warehouse south of Torvares territory, Ludger would go there himself. Underground, unseen, unheard. He would stake out the place, follow the vibrations of footsteps and mana until the Brotherhood’s collector arrived. Whether it was a handler, a mid-ranking operative, or just another disposable recruit didn’t matter. Someone would come. Someone always came.

  And when they did? When the next link in the chain revealed itself? Ludger would crush the entire structure. Not by infiltrating it. Not by interrogating its leaders. Not by playing their game.

  He would level the warehouse, burying every criminal inside beneath tons of stone and earth, reducing their network one node at a time until nothing remained but dust and whispers. That was the method that worked. Direct. Brutal. Efficient.

  The kind of method that made the underworld fear him even more than the Empire did. Ludger rested his head back again, mana threads pulsing outward with mechanical precision. He had time. He had information. He had leverage. And he had a target. Now he only needed to wait for the next fool to walk into his trap.