Chapter 176 (Thank you for your support, ER313!)

Across the tavern, one of the armed men snorted quietly. Another leaned closer to his companion, muttering something under his breath. Heads turned, attention sharpening—not on a quiet group of strangers anymore, but on a ridiculous one.

Perfect.

Ludger finally looked up, his voice cutting through the room again. “Either way,” he said, “we’re going into those mountains tomorrow. If the stories about people vanishing are true, we’ll find him—or what’s left.”

The recruits caught on at last. Callen nodded slowly, Rhea wiped her mouth and leaned back, and even Freyra folded her arms with a smirk that sold the act.

Ludger took another bite of stew, pretending not to notice the few sets of eyes now fixed on their table. Inside, he let himself grin.

A serious lie might’ve slipped past unnoticed. But nonsense? Nonsense got remembered. Besides, Ludger didn’t want to make them look like a real threat.

The moment Ludger dropped the bait, the recruits caught on—clumsily, but enough to keep the act afloat.

Derrin sighed heavily, setting down his spoon. “We’ve been searching for months. Maybe it’s time to accept he’s gone. Uncle Ben was just a drunk with bad advice and worse taste in words.”

“Yeah,” Callen added, forcing a laugh that came out a little too loud. “We’ve chased half the frontier already. Every mountain, every forest. It’s a waste of time.”

Rhea chimed in next, feigning irritation. “You said that last time too, and all we found was a frozen goat.”

Ludger exhaled through his nose, the perfect mix of weariness and determination. “That was different,” he said, voice steady. “I’ve heard rumors this time. About a mage hunting bandits in the southern mountains. If anyone’s seen him, it’ll be that mage.”

The table went quiet, but the silence that followed wasn’t theirs—it belonged to the room.

The change was subtle but unmistakable. Conversations around them faltered again. The men at the back table shifted slightly, mugs half-raised but eyes sharp. Someone scraped a chair back an inch too far and didn’t sit down again.

Ludger kept his gaze low, pretending to focus on his stew while his mana sense reached outward like threads in the soil. He let his Seismic Sense ripple through the tavern ground, through the street beyond, feeling for movement.

For a few minutes, nothing. Just the slow pulse of heartbeats, the steady vibration of feet shuffling on wood.

Then—there.

Two of the men at the back rose without a word. Their boots struck the floor once, twice, and then disappeared into the muted rhythm of the night. Ludger followed the tremors as they stepped out of the tavern, their pace casual at first… and then breaking into a sprint the moment the door shut behind them.

He narrowed his eyes slightly. The vibrations cut through the dirt road, veered past the square, stopped briefly near one of the side buildings—stone foundation, probably a storage house or old barracks—and then resumed, heading straight toward the mountains.

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just let the faintest smirk pull at the corner of his mouth.

Derrin caught it immediately. “You found something,” he said under his breath.

Ludger didn’t answer, just lifted his spoon again and stirred his stew as though nothing had happened. His voice was low, almost casual. “Eat up. We’ll finish soon.”

Freyra leaned closer, eyes narrowing. “You’re smiling like a wolf, pipsqueak. What did you sense?”

Ludger didn’t look up. “Dinner just got interesting.”

The others exchanged uncertain looks, but they obeyed. No more words, just the quiet clatter of spoons and the heavy tension of unspoken understanding.

Outside, the night swallowed two sets of hurried footsteps—and somewhere in the dark, a trail had just been exposed.

Ludger didn’t rush the meal. He made sure of it.

While the others ate in uneasy silence, he kept his spoon moving at a steady, deliberate pace—slow enough that even Freyra started giving him looks halfway between confusion and irritation. But he wasn’t interested in finishing. He was listening.

Every scrape of a chair. Every footstep leaving the tavern. Every shift in weight on the creaking floorboards.

His Seismic Sense stretched beneath the room like invisible roots, tracing each vibration as patrons left one by one. Some went toward the lodgings, some to nearby houses, one to the back alley. He tracked every heartbeat until they faded out of range, waiting for something—any pattern, any sudden sprint, any hidden coordination.

Nothing.

Aside from the two men who’d bolted toward the mountains earlier, everyone else dispersed like normal travelers. No one followed, no one lingered. Just the muted quiet of a tavern closing for the night.

He sat for a few minutes longer, spoon untouched in the empty bowl, pretending to savor the last bites while his senses confirmed the stillness outside. Only when the last heartbeat slipped out of range did he nod to himself.

“Alright,” he said quietly. “That’s enough.”

He stood and walked to the counter, dropping a small pouch of silver coins onto it. “For the food. And the silence, forget that we came today” he told the barkeep, who blinked at the phrasing but wisely didn’t ask questions.

Outside, the night air was cool and damp. The horses shuffled where they were tied, restless under the moonlight. The group followed, the tension in their movements betraying the questions they hadn’t dared to ask in front of others.

Freyra was the first to break. “Alright, pipsqueak,” she said, crossing her arms. “You’ve been staring at the floor like you’re reading a book only you can see. What did you find?”

Ludger adjusted his scarf and glanced toward the distant ridge. “Two of the men inside didn’t like what they heard. The moment I mentioned the southern mountains and the mage hunting bandits, they left. Fast. Stopped by one of the old stone buildings, then kept going toward the peaks.”

Derrin frowned. “So they’re connected.”

“Or running to warn someone,” Ludger said. “Either way, they didn’t stick around to finish their drinks.”

Rhea glanced toward the dark trail leading out of town. “You think it’s them? The bandits Maurien was talking about?”

“Could be,” Ludger said, mounting his horse. “Could be their messengers. Either way, we’ll find out soon enough.”

Freyra smirked, the fire in her eyes flaring again. “Finally. I was getting bored.”

Ludger gave her a dry look. “Try to stay bored a little longer. If we’re lucky, it’ll stay that way until morning.”

She snorted, but the smile didn’t fade.

As they rode out of the quiet village, Ludger cast one last glance over his shoulder. The tavern lights were already dimming, the streets returning to their unnatural stillness. But the faint tremor of those two sets of footsteps still lingered in his mind, leading north into the dark.

Whatever lay ahead, he’d found the first real thread to pull—and he didn’t plan to let go.

They reached the edge of the village, where the dim lanterns gave way to open dark and the scent of pine drifted down from the mountains. The night was unnervingly still—no dogs barking, no wind, just the occasional shuffle of their restless horses.

Ludger’s  eyes were fixed on a cluster of old buildings a few hundred meters away. One of them, a squat stone structure near the edge of the fields, was where the two men had stopped earlier.

He turned to the others. “Stay here,” he said, his tone flat and calm. “Watch the horses.”

Rhea frowned immediately. “What? You’re going alone?”

“Yeah.” Ludger adjusted his scarf, already pulling his gloves tighter. “If those men left something behind, I’ll find it faster on my own. And if there’s trouble, too many people will just make noise and get noticed.”

Taron shifted in his saddle, looking uneasy. “You can handle yourself, but if something happens—”

“Then you’ll still be alive to tell Arslan it was my fault,” Ludger said dryly.

That didn’t make anyone feel better.

Even Derrin’s voice had lost its usual confidence. “You sure about this, boss?”

Ludger gave a short nod. “I won’t be caught off guard. If I sense anything off, I’ll run. No heroics, no dramatics.” He paused, meeting their eyes one by one. “You’ll know if something goes wrong.”

Freyra snorted, leaning back in her saddle. “I don’t see why you get all the fun while we babysit horses.”

“Because you look like fun,” Ludger replied, deadpan. “If anyone’s watching, I’d rather they keep their eyes on the seven-foot northerner in armor than on me.”

That earned a short laugh from Rhea, but the tension lingered.

Ludger looked at Callen next. “One favor before I go. Can you summon a short rain? Not much—just enough to be noticed from the mountains. Maurien’s keeping an eye on the mountains. If he sees it, he’ll know where we are.”

Callen nodded quickly. “Got it. Light shower, localized.”

He dismounted, muttering an incantation under his breath. A few heartbeats later, the smell of wet earth filled the air, and thin droplets began to fall—soft, steady, and silent. The kind of rain that would glisten from miles away but leave no trace of sound.

Ludger glanced up, feeling a few drops hit his scarf. “Perfect.”

Freyra crossed her arms. “You really think the old man’s watching for rain?”

“He said that he would send a message, but he will come faster if he notices that we called for him,” Ludger said simply. “This is the signal.”

Then he started walking toward the ruins, boots sinking slightly in the damp soil. His steps were slow, measured—barely louder than the patter of rain.

Behind him, the recruits watched in uneasy silence as his figure disappeared into the mist, the green scarf the last thing visible under the soft silver drizzle.

Freyra exhaled, tilting her head. “If he dies,” she muttered, “My old man will nag me until the day of his death.”

Rhea shot her a look. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

Freyra shrugged. “Doesn’t have to.”

They fell quiet again, the horses stamping lightly as the rain fell, each of them straining to catch the faintest sound from the direction Ludger had gone—hoping that silence still meant everything was fine.

Ludger moved like something the rain wanted to hide. He had practiced slipping between shadows long enough to consider a familiar weapon, his assassin’s class skills hadn’t gone rusty, and tonight the patter of the brief shower made his path nearly noiseless. The drops dulled the scrape of boots on ground. He let the weather do half the work.

His Seismic Sense cut through it all like a knife through cloth. Water droplets were featherweights to the ground-feel he trusted; the wet top layer didn’t hide a footprint from him any more than fog hid a ridge. He sent his awareness sliding under rooflines and through packed earth, reading pressure and weight like sentences. Nothing large moved inside the warehouse; no clustered heartbeats, no marching steps. If someone were waiting, they were either very still—too still—or very good at hiding.

The building itself looked ordinary enough from the outside: low stone, a single shuttered window, and a wide loading door scarred by years of ropes and carts. Ludger skirted it, watching for tracks, listening for the slightest change in the ground. He walked to the place where the two men had paused, crouched, and let his senses sink down.

At first there was nothing that shouted danger. Then, just beyond where his fingertip met cold earth, something felt wrong—the pressure there was flatter, a fraction off from the surrounding packed soil, like a book slipped into a shelf the wrong way. It took a moment for the pattern to refine into meaning: a subtle discontinuity, a seam in the ground’s own layout.

He crouched lower and narrowed his awareness to the spot, fingers pressing to the dirt with the habitual precision of someone who could read whole conversations from a pebble shift. The seam became a line. A fake door laid into the floor, masked by dust and a thin film of damp.

Ludger let a small, precise pulse of earth-magic travel from his palm into the seam. The stones reacted, grain by grain loosening where he asked. The lid slid aside like a tongue unhooking, revealing a dark shaft below. A stairwell folded down into cool, damp black, carrying the smell of old stone and something faintly metallic—blood, or old iron tools, or both. A faint draft whispered up the hole, carrying away any scent of rain and replacing it with the stale breath of something buried.

He didn’t hesitate. With the same careful control he used to shape walls, he closed the seam behind him just enough to muffle noise, then eased himself down the first steps as he used Tinder to illuminate the surroundings. The staircase smelled of mildew and old coal and, underneath, something herbaceous and biting—just like Maurien had described.

He felt the ground beneath, noting its give and the way the stone absorbed sound. He checked the way his boots struck each step—no echo, nothing sudden. The rain above drummed a steady insistence, and for the first time since he’d left, Ludger allowed the smallest, sharpest part of the smile to show.

This was a thread worth pulling.

Ludger reached the bottom of the stairwell and stepped into a wide, low-ceilinged room. The angles smelled of damp stone and the ghost of woodsmoke; rows of crates sat in organised piles like a lazy army. Most were empty. A few lay toppled—splintered lids, a smear of fresh sawdust where someone had dragged them in a hurry. The dust on the floor was faint, not the thick film of long abandonment. Someone had wiped this place clean in the last few days.

He planted a hand on the flagstones and let his Seismic Sense run, fingers opening like roots. The floor told him everything it could: the weight of crates moved last at dawn, a heavy tread where two men had stood briefly, the absence of other repeated traffic. There were no side passages, no cleverly hidden tunnels—only the stairs that led up. Whoever used this room treated it as a simple waystation: goods in, goods out, quick hands, quiet loading.

He moved among the boxes, palms skimming the wood, coaxing memory from grain and seam. The smell hit him before his eyes registered the labels—metallic, sweet, bitter. Gold: that dry, bright tang that clung to coin and chain alike. Blood: iron and copper under the tongue of the air, faint but unmistakable. Herbs: something pungent and chemical beneath the smoke—a scent Maurien had warned him about, the kind alchemists prized and apothecaries feared.