Ludger leaned back slightly and looked over the map. Enough noise to keep the Empire staring at the wrong things while he kept cutting at the hidden parts underneath.
His fingers tapped once against the desk. As soon as he fully mastered Guild Master, he would return to the labyrinth. This time, it wouldn’t be for trade or scouting. It would be for the Monk class. His gaze dropped briefly to his own arm.
If his body had gotten strong enough by then, he would test Overdrive x3 again. If not… Then he would keep relying on what worked.
Tricks. Timing. The freezing mana swords. The kind of methods people underestimated right until their bodies stopped moving. Ludger looked back at the map and added one final mark near Lionfang’s eastern approach.
He didn’t need every path to be perfect. He just needed enough of them to make sure the future kept coming through his city instead of someone else’s.
Then Ludger decided to add one more reason for everyone around him to get stronger. If motivation worked, there was no reason not to weaponize it.
He took a clean sheet of paper and started writing down the change in payment structure. From now on, any guild member who brought back froststeel and sold it to the Lionsguard would be paid double the previous rate.
Simple. Direct. Extremely effective.
It would wipe out his profit from the material itself almost entirely. His gains from froststeel would drop to basically nothing. That was fine for now.
Money only mattered when it failed to turn into something useful, and this would turn directly into stronger fighters, more loyal guild members, and a faster-growing force around him. That was worth far more than squeezing every possible coin out of raw material.
And if he needed more money?
Then he would just have to keep doing what he had already been doing. Make products with higher added value. Refine more. Forge better. Sell smarter.
Raw resources were good. Finished goods were better. Branded relics, weapons, tools, and other products people couldn’t easily replace… those were where real profit lived.
So losing margin on froststeel wasn’t actually a problem. It just meant he had to keep climbing. Once he finished writing that down, Ludger leaned back slightly. Then another idea hit him. A better one.
His fingers tapped once against the desk as the logic lined itself up in his head.
Once Guild Master was fully mastered, the class bonuses would remain even when unequipped. The boost to parameters, the improved recovery, the support effects spread across members under his command, those benefits would become permanent. Not tied to the class being active. Just part of what he had built.
That meant his people would stay stronger all the time. Not only during operations. Not only when he was actively focusing on support. Always. Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly.
If that happened… Then there would be no reason to keep the Lionsguard limited to a single concentrated core. He could create more branches. Separate groups.
Independent teams under the guild’s banner, each one strong enough to operate in different regions, farm different labyrinths, secure different routes, and bring back different resources. He wouldn’t just be building one guild anymore.
He would be building a network. A structure that could spread. Grow. Feed itself.
And for that… He would need more labyrinths. That part was obvious.
His gaze drifted to the side as old names started resurfacing in his mind. Guilds, minor powers, local annoyances, arrogant bastards who had tried to pressure him, obstruct him, or use him in the past. At the time, crushing them hadn’t been worth the effort.
Now? Now some of them were starting to look a lot more useful. A crooked grin slowly appeared on his face. Because he had just thought of another very good way to gain even more power and influence. If people insisted on standing in his way, then the least they could do was leave behind something valuable when he stepped over them.
A full month passed after Ludger made the announcement. For a while, it had looked like Yvar aged twenty years the moment he heard it.
The man had gone silent for nearly half a minute, stared at Ludger like he was personally responsible for every future headache in the territory, then started muttering to himself about margins, purchasing structures, transport burdens, and how exactly one was supposed to plan around a vice guildmaster who treated profit like a temporary suggestion.
It had been funny for about three seconds.
After that, it became business as usual. Because despite the doubled payments for froststeel, the money never actually stopped coming. If anything, it kept flowing in from too many directions at once.
The runic swords were the biggest reason for that. Demand just kept rising. More merchants asked for them. More adventurers wanted them. More stories spread. Men who should have died surviving because the mana shield bought them one more breath, one more step, one more swing. Caravan guards crawling out of ambushes alive. Minor nobles suddenly deciding they absolutely needed a shipment for “personal security.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
So Raukor’s people kept working at full force. Forge fires stayed lit. Apprentices stayed exhausted. Orders kept piling up anyway.
And as long as those blades kept leaving Lionfang by the cartload, funds kept returning just as quickly. Enough to keep Yvar from looking like he was one bad report away from collapsing in the street.
Not that he looked happy. Just less haunted. Ludger, on the other hand, barely cared about the money by that point. It mattered, obviously. Money was movement. Labor. Materials. Influence. The kind of power idiots underestimated right until it locked them out of the future.
But his real interest during that month had been elsewhere. Guild Master. Every road project completed. Every coordinated labor effort. Every team assigned, managed, and rotated efficiently. Every group training under a shared structure instead of as scattered individuals. Every new guild member pushed harder because the system around them made it easier to improve.
All of it fed the class. And Ludger could see it.
Guild Master: Lv. 145 (All Parameters + 6 per level.)
Skills: Morale Lv. 100
Shared Insight Lv. 100
Collective Cognition: Lv. 100
Enduring Line Lv. 100
Shared Vitality Lv. 100
Fortunate Momentum Lv. 100
Shared Recovery Lv. 100
Shared Mana Regeneration Lv. 100
Shared Stamina Regeneration Lv. 100
Iron Will Lv 100
Team Mentality Lv 100
Doctrine Imprinting: Lv. 100
Parameter Transference Lv 100
Borrowed Power Lv 100
Command Radius Lv. 100
Expands the range at which Ludger’s support skills affect guild members.
The larger the radius, the easier it becomes to coordinate bigger groups without losing efficiency.
Battle Rhythm Lv. 100
Helps allied members fall into a more natural combat flow when fighting together.
Attacks, movement, and support actions become smoother and better timed.
Chain of Trust Lv. 100
Reduces the loss of efficiency caused by doubt, confusion, or lack of familiarity between members.
Especially useful when mixing veterans with recruits.
Coordinated Surge Lv. 100
Temporarily boosts the effectiveness of a full team when multiple guild members commit to the same action at once.
Best used for charges, defensive holds, focused fire, or synchronized spell use.
Burden Division Lv. 100
Spreads physical and mental strain more evenly across nearby guild members.
Prevents one person from collapsing too quickly while the rest of the group is still fresh.
Chain Relay Lv. 100
Improves the transfer of information, orders, and intent between members.
Makes it easier for teams to react properly even with minimal words.
Formation Anchor Lv. 100
Strengthens the center of a formation and helps maintain order during chaos.
The group becomes harder to scatter, break, or isolate.
Territory Cohesion Lv. 100
Guild members perform better when operating inside areas strongly tied to Ludger’s influence, such as Lionfang, guild property, roads, forts, or resource zones.
Reinforces the idea that the guild grows stronger on its own ground.
Legacy of Command Lv. 100
Doubles the effectiveness of the parameter gains of the class while also improving the effectiveness of the other skills by one percent per level.
The last few skills looked noticeably more tactical than support-focused. Ludger noticed that immediately. He just didn’t care.
Support, tactics, structure, command, those things blurred together once a class reached a certain level anyway. As long as the end result was the same, stronger guild members and a more dangerous Lionsguard, the exact category meant very little to him. The system could call it whatever it wanted.
What mattered was that Guild Master was finally where he wanted it. He had spent over a year working that class.
More than a year of managing people, building routes, training teams, assigning labor, holding together growth that should have collapsed under its own weight, and constantly turning the guild into something larger than a band of capable fighters with a name. It had been useful. Necessary, even.
But it had never really been for him. This class helped the Lionsguard more than it helped Ludger himself. And now that he had finally pushed it where it needed to be, he could move on to the next major step. Now he could focus on himself. That thought alone was enough to put him in a slightly better mood.
He sent for Yvar. By the time the archivist arrived, carrying the kind of tired posture that suggested life had already disappointed him several times before noon, Ludger was waiting with a map spread across his desk.
Yvar took one look at that and immediately looked more suspicious. Ludger didn’t waste time. He pointed at the map and went straight to the point.
“Which labyrinths in the Empire can we take,” he asked, “that would make our businesses explode?”
Yvar froze. Then he slowly raised a hand and pressed it against his face. Not even dramatically. Just with the grim resignation of a man who had heard something so dangerous that his body no longer had the energy to react properly.
He dragged his hand down and stared at Ludger.
“Are you trying,” Yvar asked, voice flat, “to give me a heart attack?”
Ludger tilted his head slightly.
“That depends. Do you have a list?”
Yvar closed his eyes. For one brief moment, he looked like a man considering whether loyalty had limits.