When night finally draped itself over Meronia, turning the city’s avenues into rivers of warm lanternlight and distant laughter, Ludger stood in his room staring at the set of clothes laid neatly across his bed. He exhaled through his nose, a long, mildly resigned sound, before reaching for the outfit piece by piece.

  Elaine had chosen it. Which meant arguing would’ve been pointless. Suicidal, even.

  He slipped into the trousers, buttoned the fitted jacket, and adjusted the collar with the same seriousness he applied to gearing up for dungeon delves. The material felt sturdier than it looked, comfortable without being constricting. That, at least, was a blessing.

  When he finally stepped in front of the mirror, he found the reflection staring back at him… tolerable.

  The attire was simple by noble standards. No shimmering embroidered enchantments, no obnoxious gold threading, and, thank to some luck, no cape. Instead, it was a sleek black jacket with a high collar, dark well-tailored trousers, boots polished enough to look intentional rather than excessive.

  But the emerald accents were impossible to ignore. Thin lines of green traced the cuffs. A subtle vertical stripe ran along the jacket’s edge. Even the inner lining had a faint leafy pattern, barely visible unless the fabric shifted.

  It wasn’t loud or flashy, but it still stood out, exactly the kind of compromise Elaine excelled at forcing onto him.

  Ludger dragged a hand over the jacket, rubbing at the green trim with a frown. He didn’t have anything against the color, but people insisted on assuming he loved it. All because of the scarf Viola had given him. And maybe because, according to some, the color “brought out his eyes.”

  Now here he was, dressed in a way that made him look just formal enough that nobles couldn’t complain, and just practical enough that he could sprint, fight, or build a wall in the middle of the ballroom if the situation demanded it.

  He rolled his shoulders, testing the fit, judging the mobility. It passed the “in case I have to punch someone” standard, which was more than he expected.

  On the small table near his bed rested the wrapped wooden box, Viola’s gift. He picked it up carefully, the weight grounding him. It was the one part of tonight he wasn’t entirely confident about, not because it wasn’t good, but because sentimental gestures were never his battlefield.

  Still… he’d done it. He took a breath, let it settle in his chest, and muttered to his reflection with the driest tone imaginable:

  “Well. Time to go survive a party.”

  And with that, dressed in emerald-trimmed resolve, Ludger stepped out into the bright, bustling night, toward the manor, the celebration, and the storm of complications that inevitably awaited him.

  Ludger had asked one of the servants earlier if he could use an empty room in the manor, something small, out of the way, preferably on the second floor with a good spread of stone underfoot. Not because he needed privacy, but because he needed silence.

  A servant had unlocked a cramped storage room for him, bare walls, a single chair, a shelf of unused linens. Perfect. He closed the door, let the quiet settle, and then placed his palm flat against the floor.

  A pulse of mana rippled outward like a heartbeat. Seismic Sense.

  It spread through the foundations, down the halls, across the gardens, and into the outer walls. In his mind, shapes formed, faint, muted outlines of moving figures, clusters of people chatting, guards pacing, servants sweeping between rooms. His mind stitched it together into a clear three-dimensional image of the estate.

  He repeated it every few seconds. Over and over. For hours.

  By the time he left the servant room and made his way down the stairs, the edges of his vision felt tight. Seismic Sense wasn’t difficult for him anymore, but doing it continuously, all day, without rest left a faint throbbing behind his eyes. He rubbed his temple as he stepped toward the ballroom, willing his focus to stay sharp.

  He didn’t have the luxury of taking it easy tonight.

  When he reached the ballroom entrance, the noise hit him first, laughter, music, the clinking of glasses, and the general hum of a full noble gathering. The air was warm with magic lanterns and people’s perfumes, and the colors of expensive clothing filled the room like spilled paint.

  Nobles from distant territories. Merchants with polished shoes and polished smiles. Adventurers in formal gear, trying not to tug at their collars. Velis dignitaries. A few Imperial Guard representatives. Too many eyes and too many egos.

  And towering over most of them, the northerners stood out like mountains in a crowd of saplings. Kharnek was the loudest thing in the room. Not the band. Not the nobles. Kharnek.

  He was already on his third, or fifth, drink, laughing deep enough to shake the chandelier. Several nobles near him looked either terrified or deeply fascinated.

  Yvar stood at his side, expression pained, tugging Kharnek’s elbow and attempting the impossible: reason.

  “Kharnek, please, slow down the drinking. You’re causing… structural noise.”

  Kharnek clapped Yvar’s back hard enough to nearly dislocate something. “Ha! Scholar, this is slowing down! I celebrate for the little bull tonight!”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “You’re still holding two mugs—"

  “—To balance each other,” Kharnek said proudly.

  Yvar’s groan was nearly lost to the music. Ludger scanned the room, letting the chaos wash past him as his mental map from Seismic Sense overlapped the physical scene. No hostile mana spikes. No suspicious weight distribution in the crowd. No one is trying too hard to blend in. So far.

  He exhaled through his nose, straightened his emerald-trimmed jacket, and stepped fully into the ballroom. Time to work. And, unfortunately, time to socialize.

  The first people to spot Ludger weren’t nobles, guards, or overly enthusiastic children. It was Dalan and Linne.

  The Velis League engineers beelined toward him the moment they caught sight of his familiar silhouette, eyes slightly too sharp for civilians, postures slightly too stiff for people supposedly “relaxing at a party.”

  “Ludger,” Dalan greeted with a tired smile, pushing up his glasses. “You look… surprisingly formal.”

  Linne elbowed him. “He means you look good. Or tidy. Or… not covered in dust. It’s a nice change.”

  Ludger blinked, deadpan. “Thanks. That was almost a compliment.”

  Up close, he noticed the dark circles under both their eyes. Their hair was neater than usual, but their exhaustion betrayed them. They looked like engineers who had been dragged directly from a workbench to a social gathering.

  Ludger raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t expect to see you two here. You met Viola what—a month ago?”

  “That’s correct,” Dalan said with a nod. “Which is why she was quite insistent we attend.”

  Linne sighed, brushing back a stray lock of hair. “Traveling this much isn’t exactly our specialty. The League usually keeps us chained to our tables. But for special allies, it’s considered proper courtesy.”

  “And,” Dalan added with a tired chuckle, “traveling doesn’t mean we stop working. We brought some prototypes with us. Testing them along the road was… informative.”

  Ludger studied them both. The subtle tremors in their hands. The fatigued blinking. The slightly smudged mana ink still lingering under Linne’s fingernails.

  “Yeah,” Ludger said, nodding slowly. “I can tell.”

  Dalan huffed, amused. “Is it that obvious?”

  “You look like you slept two hours on a moving wagon,” Ludger replied.

  “We did,” Linne said bluntly. “One hour each.”

  “That explains the eye bags.”

  “We call them ‘combat markers,’” Dalan sighed.

  Ludger almost smirked. Despite the exhaustion, the engineers were clearly excited to be there, eyes drifting over the bustling room, mentally cataloging the runic decorations, lantern mechanisms, even the way the mansion’s walls were reinforced.

  Linne leaned closer. “Are you on guard duty tonight? Or are you here to enjoy yourself?”

  “Both,” Ludger said simply.

  Dalan nodded as if he’d expected nothing else. “If there’s trouble, we’ll keep an eye out too. We may not be fighters, but we’ve had practice… detecting anomalies.”

  Ludger glanced at them. Two exhausted geniuses from the Velis League. Not fighters, but dangerous in their own right. And absolutely terrible at pretending they were merely party guests.

  “Just don’t blow anything up,” Ludger said.

  Linne made a face. “We’re engineers, not pyromancers.”

  Dalan paused. “…mostly.”

  Ludger sighed. Tonight was going to be long.

  Dalan and Linne didn’t linger long. After a few more exchanged words, they excused themselves with the weary enthusiasm of people who spotted something fascinating in the crowd, specifically, a group of engineers wearing the unmistakable iron-gray insignia of the Ironhand Syndicate. Ludger recognized a few of them as the same researchers who had once given him that thick manual on basic runic scripting.

  The moment the Velis engineers drifted toward them, the entire cluster of Syndicate members lit up like they’d found long-lost siblings. Within seconds, the groups had merged into a loud, excited huddle, scribbling sketches in the air with mana and arguing about some new runic prototype. Typical.

  Ludger would’ve ignored the whole thing, he had a job to do, after all, if not for the presence just behind them. A tall, sharply dressed toung man and eyes that missed nothing. Lucius Hakuen. Of course he was here.

  Lucius excused himself politely from the engineers' circle and made his way toward Ludger, weaving through the ballroom with a calm confidence that only someone deeply embedded in Imperial trade could maintain.

  The moment Lucius reached him, a faint smile formed on his lips.

  “ Ludger,” he said, voice smooth, cultured. “It has been a while.”

  Ludger kept his posture relaxed, neutral, his “harmless civilian” act honed more sharply than ever. The fact that Lucius had walked straight toward him without realizing Ludger was on duty was proof of that… and the realization irritated him more than it pleased him.

  He’d worked too hard suppressing his presence today. Too much time spent blending in. Too much subtlety. And it actually worked. Too well.

  Lucius continued, unaware of Ludger’s internal annoyance. “I had expected we would meet again soon. There is much I’d like to discuss, particularly about what happened in the capital.” His voice dropped a fraction, implying weight behind the words. “But this,” he gestured vaguely at the chandeliers and laughing nobles, “is hardly the appropriate place.”

  Ludger nodded once. “Agreed.”

  Lucius’s gaze sharpened briefly, assessing, curious, maybe even impressed that Ludger wasn’t bristling or avoiding him. But he didn’t pry.

  “At any rate,” Lucius said lightly, “I hope tonight remains peaceful.”

  Ludger’s expression didn’t change. He sincerely doubted it. But he let Lucius join the crowd again, the merchant melting into the flow of nobles and dignitaries as if he were part of the ballroom’s design. Once he was gone, Ludger’s irritation quietly simmered.

  Great. My acting skills are too good. Even the sharp ones can’t see what I’m doing.

  Useful… but annoying. Especially on a night when trouble was only beginning to gather at the edges of the celebration.

  Lucius lingered longer than Ludger expected.

  He didn’t mingle much, didn’t drift far, didn’t engage with the engineers the way he normally would. Instead, he stayed within Ludger’s peripheral vision—hovering just close enough to approach, then backing away as if losing his nerve. His posture was wrong. Too tense. His shoulders stiff. His feet shifting every few seconds like he was standing on heated coals.

  Ludger noticed. He noticed everything tonight.

  Eventually, Lucius stepped back toward him, exhaled sharply through his nose, and blurted out—far less composed than usual:

  “Hey, Ludger… what would you think if I said that I wanted to… really get along with your half sister?”

  Ludger blinked. Slowly. Painfully.

  He stared at Lucius like the man had suddenly revealed he was a shapeshifting goblin. Lucius didn’t stop there, unfortunately.

  “I mean really get along.” His voice dropped, his ears turning the faintest shade of red. “As in… seriously.”

  “…Are you drunk?” Ludger asked flatly.